Fred Astaire Quotes

The hardest job kids face today is learning good manners without seeing any.

Do it big, do it right, and do it with style.

Some people seem to think that good dancers are born, but all the good dancers I have known are taught or trained.

The higher up you go, the more mistakes you are allowed. Right at the top, if you make enough of them, it's considered to be your style.

Dancing is a vertical interpretation of a horizontal intention.

I have no desire to prove anything by dancing ... I just dance.

If it doesn't look easy it is that we have not tried hard enough yet.

For ballroom dancing, remember that your partners have their own distinctive styles also. Cultivate flexibility. Be able to adapt your style to that of your partner. In doing so, you are not surrendering your individuality, but blending it with that of your partner.

I just told my agent to forget all other projects for me. I was waiting for Audrey Hepburn. She asked for me, and I was ready. This could be the last and only opportunity I’d have to work with the great and lovely Audrey Hepburn and I was not missing it. Period.

And that love that wrinkles your nose touches my foolish heart.

When you're experimenting you have to try so many things before you choose what you want, and you may go days getting nothing but exhaustion.

I have no desire to prove anything by my work. I have never used it as an outlet or as a means of expressing myself. I just dance.

I just put my feet in the ground and move them around.

I don't make love by kissing, I make love by dancing.

When you have a Dancing partner, there's always gonna be a moment where the girl's gonna cry, Ginger didn't do that. But, most every other girl I've worked with have cried because they said "aah, I can't do it" and I have to go "Yes, you can, Shut up!" and they do do it.

Disco is just jitterbug.

If we followed our own advice, we'd be successful.

Can't act. Can't sing. Slightly bald. Can dance a little.

When working on my choreography I am not always receptive to outside suggestions or opinions. I believe that if you have something in mind in the way of a creation, such as a new dance, a sequence, or an effect, you are certain to come up with inaccurate criticism and damaging results if you go around asking for opinions.

Why didn't you tell me I was in love with you?

If your gonna go down, go down swinging!

Be yourself-but don't be conspicuous.

It takes time to get a dance right, to create something memorable.

There comes a day when people begin to say, 'Why doesn't that old duffer retire?' I want to get out while they're still saying Astaire is a hell of a dancer.

It's nice that all the composers have said that nobody interprets a lyric like Fred Astaire. But when it comes to selling records I was never worth anything particularly except as a collector's item.

I often take a brand-new suit or hat and throw it up against the wall a few times to get that stiff, square newness out of it.

If the dance is right, there shouldn't be a single superfluous movement.

I have never had anything that I can remember in the business - and that includes all the movies and the stage shows and everything - that I didn't enjoy. I didn't like some of the small-time vaudeville, because we weren't going on and getting better. Aside from that, I didn't dislike anything.

Dancing is a sweat job.

Chance is the fool's name for Fate

Oh, God! That boy moves in a very exceptional way. That's the greatest dancer of the century.

But I do nothing that I don't like, such as "inventing" up to the arty or "down" to the corny. I happen to relish a certain type of corn. What I think is the really dangerous approach is the "let's be artistic" attitude. I know that artistry just happens.

The unpadded shoulders, the three-buttoned long and boxy coat, the too-short, thin pants, and the thin ties with striped buttoned shirts in dark colors-well, I suppose this may go very well with some personalities but it's not for me. To me, all such look like TV producers. Maybe they want to.

This search for what you want is like tracking something that doesn't want to be tracked. It takes time to get a dance right, to create something memorable.

Of course, Ginger was able to accomplish sex through dance. We told more through our movements instead of the big clinch. We did it all in the dance.

Either the camera will dance, or I will.

I am bit sending messages with my feet. All I ever wanted was not to come up empty. I did it for the dough and the old applause.

I inherited the knowledge that sometimes (talents) not only skip a generation, but sometimes run screaming from it. Ironically, it was the singing non-ability that helped feed my love of laughter.

I don't remember anybody ever pointing me out as a dancing prodigy, but I played a not bad second base.

I don't want to be the oldest performer in captivity... I don't want to look like a little old man dancing out there.

Slippery stages were the terror of my life.

People think I was born in top hat and tails.

I don't like top hats, white ties, and tails.

I'm just a hoofer with a spare set of tails.

We attend to his later performances as a dramatic actor with respect, but watching the nondancing, nonsinging Astaire is like watching a grounded skylark.

Oh, there's no such thing as my favorite performance. I can't sit here today and look back, and say, Top Hat was better than Easter Parade or any of the others. I just don't look back, period. When I finish with a project, I say 'all right, that's that. What's next?'

In dealing with a girl or a horse, one lets nature take its course

I had some ballet training but didn't like it. It was like a game to me.