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I did not choose to be a dancer. I was chosen.

Martha Graham

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

Alive Artist Divine Satisfaction Strange Time
The reason dance has held such an ageless magic for the world is that it has been the symbol of the performance of living.
MARTHA GRAHAM

Age Dance Live Magic Performance Reason
Dancers are the messengers of the gods.
MARTHA GRAHAM

Dance God Message
What people in the world think of you is really none of your business.
MARTHA GRAHAM

Business People Thinking World Yourself
My dancing is not an attempt to interpret life in the literary sense. It is an affirmation of life through movement.
MARTHA GRAHAM

Dance Life Literature Movement
A dancer must listen to his body and pay homage to it. Behind the movement lies this terrible, driving passion, this necessity. I won’t settle for anything less.
MARTHA GRAHAM

Body Dance Listening Movement Myself Necessary Pay Terrible
Dancers today can do anything; the technique is phenomenal. The passion and the meaning to their movement can be another thing.
MARTHA GRAHAM

Dance Meaning Movement Passion Technique
We look at the dance to impart the sensation of living in an affirmation of life, to energize the spectator into keener awareness of the vigor, the mystery, the humor, the variety, and the wonder of life. This is the function of the American dance.
MARTHA GRAHAM

Affirmation Aware Dance Function Live Mystery Wonderful
Some of you are doomed to be artists.
MARTHA GRAHAM

Artist Deep One Liner
You have no right to go before a public without an adequate technique, just because you feel. Anything feels – a leaf feels, a storm feels – what right have you to do that? You have to have speech, and it’s a cultivated speech.
MARTHA GRAHAM

Cultivate Feeling Right Storm Technique Yourself
You will only get out of a dance class what you bring to it. Learn by practice.
MARTHA GRAHAM

Class Dance Learning Practice Yourself
Fire is the test of gold; adversity, of strong men.
MARTHA GRAHAM

Adversity Fire Gold Man Test
I get up, I fall down, all the while I am dancing.
MARTHA GRAHAM

Dance Fall Inspirational Myself
In a dancer, there is a reverence for such forgotten things as the miracle of the small beautiful bones and their delicate strength.
MARTHA GRAHAM

Beautiful Dance Delicate Forget Miracle Strength
My childhood years were a balance of dark and light.
MARTHA GRAHAM

Children Darkness Time
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 GRAHAM

Art Hope Myself Thinking Threat

I did not choose to be a dancer. I was chosen.

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I did not choose to be a dancer. I was chosen.

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More Martha Graham Quotes