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Misery is a communicable disease.

Martha Graham

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Martha Graham
Age: 96 †
Born: 1894
Born: May 11
Died: 1991
Died: April 1
Artist
Ballet Dancer
Ballet Master
Choreographer
Costume Designer
Dancer
Music Pedagogue
Pittsburg
Pennsylvania
Martha Grehem
Misery
Disease
Emotion
Attitude
Communicable

More quotes by Martha Graham

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My childhood years were a balance of dark and light.
Martha Graham
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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.
Martha Graham
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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
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Our arms start from the back because they were once wings.
Martha Graham
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The body says what words cannot.
Martha Graham
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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.
Martha Graham
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Dancers are the messengers of the gods.
Martha Graham
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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.
Martha Graham
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What makes a great dancer is not technique. What makes a great dancer is passion.
Martha Graham
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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
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I did not choose to be a dancer. I was chosen.
Martha Graham
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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
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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 memory
Martha Graham
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Some of you are doomed to be artists.
Martha Graham
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Dancing appears glamorous, easy, delightful. But the path to paradise of the achievement is not easier than any other. There is fatigue so great that the body cries, even in its sleep. There are times of complete frustration, there are daily small deaths.
Martha Graham
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There is a vitality, a life force, an energy, a quickening that is translated through you into action, and because there is only one of you in all of time, this expression is unique.
Martha Graham
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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.
Martha Graham
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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.
Martha Graham
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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.
Martha Graham
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Freedom to a dancer means discipline. That is what technique is for -- liberation.
Martha Graham