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Nothing is more revealing than movement.

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 body is a sacred garment. It’s your first and last garment; it is what you enter life in and what you depart life with, and it should be treated with honor.
MARTHA GRAHAM

Body Life Respect Sacred Treat Yourself
I use the words gods and goddesses principally, I think, to mean beautiful bodies – bodies that are absolute instruments. And I believe in discipline, I believe in a very definite technique.
MARTHA GRAHAM

Believe Discipline God Principle Technique Thinking Word
People have asked me why I chose to be a dancer. I did not choose. I was chosen to be a dancer, and with that, you live all your life.
MARTHA GRAHAM

Choice Dance Life People Yourself
There is a force, a quickness that is translated through you into action. If you block it, the world will not have it.
MARTHA GRAHAM

Action Block Force Quick Translation World Yourself
All that is important is this one moment in movement. Make the moment important, vital, and worth living. Do not let it slip away unnoticed and unused.
MARTHA GRAHAM

Important Live Moments Notice Time Worth
I did not choose to be a dancer. I was chosen.
MARTHA GRAHAM

Choice Dance Myself Willing
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
Nothing is more revealing than movement.
MARTHA GRAHAM

Exposure Movement Reveal
It’s what I always wanted to do, to show the laughter, the fun, the joy of dance.
MARTHA GRAHAM

Dance Fun Joy Laughter Myself
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.
MARTHA GRAHAM

Communication Depression Face Feeling Misery Sick
Some of you are doomed to be artists.
MARTHA GRAHAM

Artist Deep One Liner
The center of the stage is where I am.
MARTHA GRAHAM

Artist Attention Myself Place Stage
I’d rather an audience like me than dislike me, but I’d rather they disliked me than be apathetic, because that is the kiss of death.
MARTHA GRAHAM

Audience Death Kiss Myself
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.
MARTHA GRAHAM

Ambition Enough Fact Fulfill Lost Necessary World Yourself
Practice is a means of inviting the perfection desired.
MARTHA GRAHAM

Desire Invitation Perfection Practice
The secret to dancing is that it is about everything except dancing.
MARTHA GRAHAM

Dance Exception Freedom Secret
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.
MARTHA GRAHAM

Dance End Ideas Myself Pattern Start
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
Discipline is liberation.
MARTHA GRAHAM

Discipline Liberty One Liberty
We learn by practice. Whether it means to learn to dance by practicing dancing or to learn to live by practicing living, the principles are the same. One becomes in some area an athlete of God.
MARTHA GRAHAM

Area Athlete Dance God Learning Live Oneself Practice
Every dance is a kind of fever chart, a graph of the heart.
MARTHA GRAHAM

Dance Heart Measurement
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.
MARTHA GRAHAM

Art Dance Essential Exception Live Memories Movement Photograph
Some men have thousands of reasons why they cannot do what they want to, when all they need is one reason why they can.
MARTHA GRAHAM

Excuse Man Oneself Reason Willing
Practice means to perform, over and over again in the face of all obstacles, some act of vision, of faith, of desire. Practice is a means of inviting the perfection desired.
MARTHA GRAHAM

Desire Face Faith Invitation Obstacle Perfection Performance Practice Vision
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.
MARTHA GRAHAM

Death Live Ourselves Past People Time
Think of the magic of that foot, comparatively small, upon which your whole weight rests. It’s a miracle, and the dance is a celebration of that miracle.
MARTHA GRAHAM

Body Celebration Dance Magic Miracle Small Yourself

Nothing is more revealing than movement.

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Nothing is more revealing than movement.

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