Citations

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.

[on modern movies] They tend to overdo the vulgarity. I'm not embarrassed by the language itself, but it's embarrassing to be listening to it, sitting next to perfect strangers.

Of course, [Ginger Rogers] 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.

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

People think I was born in top hat and tails.

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

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.

[on his screen partnership with Ginger Rogers] Ginger was brilliantly effective. She made everything work for her. Actually, she made things very fine for the both of us and she deserves most of the credit for our success.

I suppose I made it look easy, but gee whiz, did I work and worry.

Dancing is a sweat job.

[to Jack Lemmon] You're at a level where you can only afford one mistake. The higher up you go, the more mistakes you're allowed. Right at the top, if you make enough of them, it's considered to be your style.

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.

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

[on John Travolta in La fièvre du samedi soir (1977)] He's not a dancer. What he did in those dance scenes was very attractive but he is basically not a dancer. I was dancing like that years ago, you know. Disco is just jitterbug.

[on Ginger Rogers] She may have faked a little, but we knew we had a good thing going.

[on tap dancer Eleanor Powell] Eleanor was an out-and-out dancer. She danced like a man. She slammed the floor and did it great and that's fine and suddenly she's on her toes in the ballet sequence -- it did look kinda funny.

[on Rita Hayworth] A great dancer but a different style to me.

[on Judy Garland] She was just simply wonderful. She danced beautifully, learned beautifully. She was very adept at whatever she did. Really in fine form. We were all set to do another picture together, but she got sick and that was the end of that.

[on actress/dancer Leslie Caron] A ballet dancer really, but technically good. I called her the sergeant major.

[on Gene Kelly] You know, that Kelly, he's just terrific. That's all there is to it. He dances like crazy, he directs like crazy. I adore this guy. I really am crazy about his work.

(on dancing partner Cyd Charisse) When you dance with her, you stay danced.

[on joining the cast of La tour infernale (1974)] It's a fun picture to make - all fire and water.

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

All the girls I ever danced with thought they couldn't do it. So they always cried. All except Ginger. No, no, Ginger never cried.

[on Ginger Rogers when he was asked who his favorite dancing partner was by British TV interviewer Michael Parkinson in 1976] Excuse me, I must say Ginger was certainly the one. You know, the most effective partner I had. Everyone knows. That was a whole other thing that we did...I just want to pay a tribute to Ginger because we did so many pictures together and believe me it was a value to have that girl...she had it. She was just great!

[on Ginger Rogers to Raymond Rohauer, curator of the New York Gallery of Modern Art] Ginger was brilliantly effective. She made everything work for her. Actually she made everything work very fine for both of us and she deserves most of the credit for our success.

(On Michael Jackson) Oh God! That boy moves in a very exceptional way. That's the greatest dancer of the century. I didn't want to leave this world without knowing who my descendant was. Thank you Michael.

(On Tout l'or du ciel (1981)) I have never spent two more miserable hours in my life. Every scene was cheap and vulgar. They don't realize that the '30s were a very innocent age, and that [the film] should have been set in the '80s - it was just froth; it makes you cry it's so distasteful.

What I think is the really dangerous approach is the "let's be artistic" attitude. I know that artistry just happens.

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.

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.

[in 1946] 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.

I make love by dancing.