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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.

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
Life
Sounds
Wonder
Sound
Times
Give
Giving
Gaiety
Great
Grim
Thing
Frightening

More quotes by Martha Graham

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My childhood years were a balance of dark and light.
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I want to make people feel intensely alive. I'd rather have them against me than indifferent.
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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.
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Movement never lies. It is a barometer telling the state of the soul's weather to all who can read it.
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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.
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'Age' is the acceptance of a term of years. But maturity is the glory of years.
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Art is eternal for it reveals the inner landscape which is the soul of man.
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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.
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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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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.
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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'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.
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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.
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The body says what words cannot.
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I believe that we learn by practice.
Martha Graham
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Theater is a verb before it is a noun, an act before it is a place.
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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.
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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.
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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