I don't remember not dancing. When I realized I was alive and these were my parents, and I could walk and talk, I could dance.

I read the script, and I knew it was a good part. It was written for a white actor. That's what I'm up against - I have to try to make roles happen for me that aren't written black.

I never wanted to be a star, I just wanted to get work.

They were very generous with me. Everybody was willing to talk about their particular accident, what they had to deal with and how they got back in touch with their competitors' spirit.

My character had been in the chair for seven years. He had gone through his anger, depression, drug and alcohol abuse. He had gone through everything, now he was up, he was happy, he was filled with his dream.

I think everybody at some point - especially if they've been working their whole lives - should take time out and think about what they've done.

They told me that the hotels had maybe two rooms set up for people with disabilities, but if they got there too late, and didn't get one of these rooms, they couldn't take a shower. The room wasn't hooked up for them, or maybe the sink was too high.

I wanted to make a movie, because the whole life of the movies appealed to me. You work hard for three or four months, then you don't work at all for a couple of months.

Once I got to be about twenty-five, I got interested in the music of the time. I started smokin' dope, I started drinking, I started slowing down and trying to find myself. I didn't want to work in nightclubs.

I don't remember not dancing. When I realized I was alive and these were my parents, and I could walk and talk, I could dance.

It turned out to be exactly that, but more challenging emotionally. I looked at it in a more physical way, having to act in a chair and move around. But it really was more emotionally challenging.

You know the first time I sat in the chair I felt anything but up, it was very emotional for me. I had a chair in my hotel room, a chair at rehearsal, and I was trying to spend as much time as I could in the chair.

I can remember feeling very angry, and saying no! I can do it myself! From that point of view it was very emotional for me to get myself to the point to sit in the chair and be "up".

It would be like the films I've seen where wardens would decide to be in a jail cell for a week, to get a sense of what it would be like to be a prisoner.

As parents, we're human beings, too, but sometimes we're not as understanding as we'd like to be.

I can remember feeling very angry, and saying no! I can do it myself! From that point of view it was very emotional for me to get myself to the point to sit in the chair and be 'up'.

I grew up in the '50s, a tough time for African Americans. I had friends whose fathers would openly say, 'Just bite your tongu;, don't cause any problems.' My father was not like that. Even in the toughest times racially, if somebody disrespected his family, they were in trouble.

I like to do an interview when the other person isn't expecting it. I find it's more spontaneous.

I'm going to tap until I can't: I'll be so old, all I can do is walk out from the wings to stage center. But I'll be there.

I've had times when I've done what seems like a thousand interviews to promote a film that I'm in. I start to think that I'm the best thing that ever happened to the world, talkin' about myself for cryin' out loud. Then I come home, and my wife needs me to help with dinner and empty the garbage, and the kids need help with their homework.

My father has always been my hero.

My roots are on the live performing stage, so while I enjoy making films and the other things that I do, when I get on stage, I feel at home; I'm comfortable.

One of the things about working on stage - actually, about working in show business, that is - is that it's such a collaborative effort. I suppose that everything in life is - every endeavor where people are able to be successful.

When my brother and me got into performing in the late '40s and early '50s, it was a sensational opportunity to learn from our elders. Every show we played had a dancer, a comic, a juggler, a singer, an acrobat. I came to appreciate virtuosity in all forms of the business.

The best entertainment speaks to the human condition in an honest way.

The doctors say he has a 50 50 chance of surviving but theres only a ten percent chance of that.

The Lord doesn't like us to be dead. Be alive. Sometimes I dance to the glory of the Lord, because He said so.

I never danced a step in my life so naturally. My first motion picture was a musical, and Bob Fosse was the choreographer. I didn't exactly dance for Fosse, I just did the best that I could to do what he taught us to do.

Dance is very, very old. With Louis XIV at Versailles is where ballet started.

I cannot sing, dance or act; what else would I be but a talk show host.

No matter how close to yours another's steps have grown, in the end there is one dance you'll do alone.

When I got a lap dance, because I was 17, they had to put a massive pillow between me and the girl when she was grinding me. It was weird, yet pleasurable.

I grew up with six brothers. That's how I learned to dance - waiting for the bathroom.

I would love to do more music, definitely. That is my true passion. Dance is first and then music.

They're not particular about whether you're playing a flatted fifth or a ruptured 129th as long as they can dance to it.

I have thought about the next steps, and you know, they still don't know that I can dance. They don't know it, and it's frustrating me because I feel that it's an edge that I have, and I'm not talking about I took this hip hop class, I'm talking about this is how people actually know me.

The real message of the Dance opens up the vistas of life to all who have the urge to express beauty with no other instrument than their own bodies, with no apparatus and no dependence on anything other than space.

It's always been my dream to do a dance scene with Anthony Hopkins.

Sex in a dance is in the eyes of the beholder. I never thought my dances sexy. I suppose that's because I see myself with my face washed, and to me I look like a rabbit.

I had certain physical limitations that made me change the choreography for myself or made me more interested in choreography only rather than dancing. I have never been a person who wanted to just dance. I have always been interested in developing for other people.

We were at our best when we were playing in the dance halls of Liverpool and Hamburg. The world never saw that.

We want to be the band to dance to when the bomb drops.

Life is like dancing. If we have a big floor, many people will dance. Some will get angry when the rhythm changes. But life is changing all the time.

People come to see beauty, and I dance to give it to them.

The dance world is too small in lots of ways - it's too intense, it rattles around itself, and it needs exposing to other ideas.

I wasn't out drinking and abusing my body. I simply loved to go out and dance.

And dance is wonderful because dance is so immediate.

Disco is just pop music you can dance to.

For a London play, rehearsal time would be four weeks for the entire show. In films, I'd spend six weeks on the big dance numbers to get them perfect before the actual shooting.