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You don't pick dance. Dance picks you.

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
Pick
Picks
Dance

More quotes by 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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I believe one thing: that today is yesterday and tomorrow is today and you can't stop.
Martha Graham
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Nobody cares if you can't dance well.
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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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I am certain that movement never lies. There is only one law of posture I have been able to discover - the perpendicular line connecting heaven and earth.
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Discipline is liberation.
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...Although, as the Latin verb to educate, educate, indicates, it is not a question of putting something in but drawing it out, if it is there to begin with...I want all of my students and all of my dancers to be aware of the poignancy of life at that moment. I would like to feel that I had, in some way, given them the gift of themselves.
Martha Graham
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The center of the stage is where I am.
Martha Graham
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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.
Martha Graham
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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.
Martha Graham
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You see, when weaving a blanket, an Indian woman leaves a flaw in the weaving of that blanket to let the soul out.
Martha Graham
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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
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Some of you are doomed to be artists.
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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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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I did not choose to be a dancer. I was chosen.
Martha Graham
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Dancers are the messengers of the gods.
Martha Graham
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What people in the world think of you is really none of your business.
Martha Graham
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Fire is the test of gold adversity, of strong men.
Martha Graham
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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.
Martha Graham