I don’t think in art there is ever a precedent; each moment is a new one and terrifying and threatening and bursting with hope.
MARTHA GRAHAMSome of you are doomed to be artists.
More Martha Graham Quotes
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Dancers have more bones than most people and on the days when you work hard you are sure that you have somehow accumulated more bones than you started with.
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Misery is a communicable disease.
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The secret to dancing is that it is about everything except dancing.
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The unique must be fulfilled.
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Dancing is a very living art. It is essentially of the moment, although a very old art. A dancer’s art is lived while he is dancing. Nothing is left of his art except the pictures and the memories–when his dancing days are over.
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I feel that the essence of dance is the expression of man–the landscape of his soul. I hope that every dance I do reveals something of myself or some wonderful thing a human can be.
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In a dancer, there is a reverence for such forgotten things as the miracle of the small beautiful bones and their delicate strength.
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Censorship is the height of vanity.
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I believe one thing: that today is yesterday and tomorrow is today and you can’t stop.
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The past is not dead; it is not even past. People live on inner time; the moment in which a decisive thought or feeling takes place can be at any time. Timeless feelings are common to all of us.
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It’s not my job to look beautiful. It’s my job to look interesting.
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No artist is ahead of his time. He is his time; it is just that others are behind the times.
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The main thing, of course, always, is the fact that there is only one of you in the world, just one, and if that is not fulfilled then something has been lost. Ambition is not enough; necessity is everything.
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The body says what words cannot.
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We are all of us, unique – each a unique pattern of creativity and if we do not fulfill it, it is lost for all time.
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When you start with an idea, or something hits you, then you have to follow that through to the end, and it’s the following through to the end that makes the pattern. That, for me, is choreography.
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I am certain that movement never lies. There is only one law of posture I have been able to discover – the perpendicular line connecting heaven and earth.
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The world I’m interested in is the one where things are not named.
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Dancers today can do anything; the technique is phenomenal. The passion and the meaning to their movement can be another thing.
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Dance is the landscape of man’s soul.
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Some men have thousands of reasons why they cannot do what they want to, when all they need is one reason why they can.
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If you feel depressed you shouldn’t go out on the street because it will show on your face and you’ll give it to others. Misery is a communicable disease.
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In the end, it all comes down to the art of breathing.
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I get up, I fall down, all the while I am dancing.
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Discipline is liberation.
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No artist is pleased. There is no satisfaction whatever at any time. There is only a strange, divine dissatisfaction, a blessed unrest that keeps us marching and makes us more alive than the others.
MARTHA GRAHAM