Daily Inspiration Quote by Gregory Hines

Hines frames performance as a hard-won surrender, not a shiny act of confidence. The first beat is pure defiance: "very angry", "no!", "I can do it myself!" It reads like a private creed and a public persona at once - the insistence on self-sufficiency that so many Black entertainers of his era had to cultivate just to control their own careers, their own image, their own dignity. Anger here isn't decorative; it's fuel, a refusal to be handled.

Then the quote pivots. "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'". The phrase "sit in the chair" quietly signals a specific ritual: the makeup chair, the interview chair, the pre-show chair where other hands take over. For someone whose identity is built on motion - tap's precision, the body as instrument - stillness becomes its own vulnerability. Letting yourself be "up" isn't just being onstage; it's accepting visibility, accepting help, accepting that the machine of show business requires submission as well as mastery.

The scare quotes around "up" give away the tension. Being "up" is a state you manufacture, not a natural mood. Hines is describing the emotional labor of readiness: the self-talk that turns anxiety and resistance into charisma. Underneath the anecdote is an adult reckoning with control - the recognition that independence is a story artists tell to survive, while the work itself often demands trust, collaboration, and a willingness to be seen before you feel prepared.