Martha Graham
My childhood years were a balance of dark and light.Collection: Dark
The center of the stage is where I am.Collection: Stage
At the time I started in ballet they were dancing 'The Spirit of Champagne' on pointe, in Paris. I thought, 'I don't want to dance the spirit of champagne, I want to drink it!Collection: Paris
I believe that we learn by practice.Collection: Believe
One can always lament, you know — but to laugh in the face of life, that's very hard. And for me the great tragedian should also be a great comedian.Collection: Laughing
America does not concern itself now with Impressionism. We own no involved philosophy. The psyche of the land is to be found in its movement. It is to be felt as a dramatic force of energy and vitality. We move; we do not stand still. We have not yet arrived at the stock-taking stage.Collection: Philosophy
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.Collection: Beautiful
I love words very much. I've always loved to talk, and I've always love words — the words that rest in your mouth, what words mean and how you taste them and so on. And for me the spoken word can be used almost as a gesture.Collection: Mean
I don't try to tell the dancers exactly what a dance means before they do it.Collection: Mean
Sometimes it's blood memory... not the blood your mother and father gave you... but that which stretches back two or three thousand years.Collection: Mother
Dancing is just discovery, discovery, discovery - what it all means, the way the little bone near the ankle relates itself to the floor for a perfect stance, a perfect plie.Collection: Dance
You can be Eastern or Burmese or what have you, but the function of the body and the awareness of the body results in dance and you become a dancer, not just a human being.Collection: Dancer
How many leaps did Nijinksy take before he made the one that startled the world? He took thousands and thousands and it is that legend that gives us the courage, the energy, and arrogance to go back into the studio knowing that while there is so little time to be born to the instant, you will work again among the many that you may once more be born as one. That is a dancer's world.Collection: Knowing
Pity is a corroding thing.Collection: Pity
Theater used to be a verb; it used to be an act. But nowadays it is just a noun. It is a place.Collection: Drama
Nobody cares if you can't dance well.Collection: Dance
You give all your life to doing this one thing. It sounds grim, it sounds frightening - it isn't - it has a great gaiety at times and a great wonder.Collection: Life
It is difficult to see the great dance effects as they happen, to see them accurately, catch them fast in memory. It is even more difficult to verbalize them for critical discussion. The particular essence of a performance, its human sweep of articulate rhythm in space and in time has no specific terminology to describe it by.Collection: Dance
In 1980, a well-meaning fundraiser came to see me and said, "Miss Graham, the most powerful thing you have going for you to raise money is your respectability." I wanted to spit. Respectable! Show me any artist who wants to be respectable.Collection: Powerful
Every dance is a kind of fever chart, a graph of the heart. The instrument through which the dance speaks is also the instrument through which life is lived ... the human body.Collection: Dance
I think comedy is the most difficult thing in the world, I really do.Collection: Thinking
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.Collection: Depression
What makes a great dancer is not technique. What makes a great dancer is passion.Collection: Passion
Modern dance isn't anything except one thing in my mind: the freedom of women in America.Collection: Women
It takes ten years, usually, to make a dancer. It takes ten years of handling the instrument, handling the material with which you are dealing, for you to know it completely.Collection: Dance
The gesture is the thing truly expressive of the individual - as we think so will we act.Collection: Thinking
The next time you look into the mirror, just look at the way the ears rest next to the head; look at the way the hairline grows; think of all the little bones in your wrist. It is a miracle. And the dance is a celebration of that miracle.Collection: Dance
It's not my job to look beautiful. It's my job to look interesting.Collection: Beautiful
The body is shaped, disciplined, honored, and in time, trusted.Collection: Body
The unique must be fulfilled.Collection: Unique
You see, when weaving a blanket, an Indian woman leaves a flaw in the weaving of that blanket to let the soul out.Collection: Inspirational
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.Collection: Dance
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.Collection: Dance
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.Collection: Dance
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.Collection: Dance
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.Collection: Kissing
I'm asked so often whether I believe in life after death. I do believe in the sanctity of life, the continuity of life and of energy. I know the anonymity of death has no appeal for me. It is the now that I must face and want to face.Collection: Believe
In a dancer, there is a reverence for such forgotten things as the miracle of the small beautiful bones and their delicate strength.Collection: Beautiful
All things I do are in every woman. Every woman is Medea. Every woman is Jocasta. There comes a time when a woman is a mother to her husband. Clytemnestra is every woman when she kills.Collection: Mother
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.Collection: Art
I have spent all my life with dance and being a dancer. It's permitting life to use you in a very intense way. Sometimes it is not pleasant. Sometimes it is fearful. But nevertheless it is inevitable.Collection: Dancer
Practice is a means of inviting the perfection desired.Collection: Dance
It's what I always wanted to do, to show the laughter, the fun, the joy of dance.Collection: Dance
The body is your instrument in dance, but your art is outside that creature, the body. I don't leap and jump anymore. I look at young dancers, and I am envious, more aware of what glories the body contains. But sensitivity is not made dull by age.Collection: Art
A dancer, more than any other human being, dies two deaths: the first, the physical when the powerfully trained body will no longer respond as you would wish. After all, I choreographed for myself. I never choreographed what I could not do. I changed steps in Medea and other ballets to accommodate the change. But I knew. And it haunted me. I only wanted to dance.Collection: Dance
No animal ever has an ugly body until it is domesticated. It is the same with the human body.Collection: Animal
You do not even have to believe in yourself or your work. You have to keep open and aware directly to the urges that motivate you. Keep the channel open.Collection: Dance
Some of you are doomed to be artists.Collection: Artist
I never thought of myself as being a genius. I don't know what genius is. I think a far better expression is a retriever, a lovely strong golden retriever that brings things back from the past, or retrieves things from our common blood memoryCollection: Strong