One night in his study with brandy in one hand and a cigar in the other, [my father] asked quietly, “Do you honestly think, my daughter, that dancing has progressed since the time of the Greeks?”

“No,” I replied snappily. “Do you think you write any better than Euripides?” That ought to hold him, I figured.

He looked at me long and slow. “No, my dear,” he said, “but we have Euripides’ plays. They have lasted. A dancer ceases to exist the minute she sits down.”

As Father spoke I understood death for the first time. I was a child of fourteen but I realized with melancholy that oblivion would be my collaborator no matter how fine my work.
–Agnes de Mille, “The Swan,” in Dance to the Piper