sayings of Balanchine

from an article about Balanchine by Arlene Croce in the 26 Jan 09 New Yorker:

[Balanchine] subscribed to the Hegelian view of history as a spiral: everything recurs, but in a different form. Not only dance movement but all art, even the most novel-seeming, is a version of something that has already been said or done. For this reason, he saw no harm in appropriating; he stole and was stolen from–that was the way of art. ... With Stravinsky, he shared a firm belief in the labor of art as perpetual renovation: Stravinsky, who liked to quote Goethe– "Everything has been thought of before; the task is to think of it again."

Balanchine used to say, "We all live in the same time forever. There is no future and there is no past."