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I've always thought my creative life began the moment my mother called me Twyla.

Twyla Tharp

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Twyla Tharp
Age: 83
Born: 1941
Born: July 1
Ballet Dancer
Choreographer
Dancer
Writer
Portland
Indiana
Life
Creativity
Called
Creative
Moment
Mother
Moments
Thought
Always
Began

More quotes by Twyla Tharp

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You can keep on chewing gum for ten hours, but after about a minute and a half you've got all the good out of it.
Twyla Tharp
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I think that probably the moments of discovery do come from a place that is not totally organized. Order is something that we already know about. Discoveries are in a place we don't already know about.
Twyla Tharp
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My greatest fear in working is always the end. Lately I have taken to tricking myself into finishing by leaving a hole in the middle somewhere, then stitching the two pieces together - the Union Pacific approach.
Twyla Tharp
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In terms of individuals who actually inspired me, very few of the academic people that I had access to had that power over me. Maybe it's simply because I wasn't that committed to geometry.
Twyla Tharp
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I never studied with Balanchine, but his work was very important to me.
Twyla Tharp
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Creativity is a habit, and the best creativity is a result of good work habits. That's it in a nutshell ... In order to be creative you have to know how to prepare to be creative.
Twyla Tharp
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My mother was the first woman in the county in Indiana where we were born, in Jay County, to have a college degree. She was educated as a pianist and she wanted to concertize, but when the war came she was married, had a family, so she started teaching.
Twyla Tharp
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I'm not one who divides music, dance or art into various categories. Either something works, or it doesn't.
Twyla Tharp
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There are as many forms of memory as there are ways of perceiving, and every one of them is worth mining for inspiration.
Twyla Tharp
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With each piece I've completed I have worked to make it intact, and each of them has been an equal high. It's like children. A mother refuses to pick out one as a favorite, and I can't do any better with the dances.
Twyla Tharp
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Skill is how you close the gap between what you can see in your mind's eye and what you can produce the more skill you have, the more sophisticated and accomplished your ideas can be. With absolute skill comes absolute confidence.
Twyla Tharp
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The only thing I fear more than change is no change. The business of being static makes me nuts.
Twyla Tharp
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I think of music as fuel, its spectrum of energy governed by tempi, volume, and heart.
Twyla Tharp
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Solitude is an unavoidable part of creativity. Self-reliance is a happy by-product.
Twyla Tharp
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The ballet needs to tell its own story in such a way it can be received without having to be translated into language.
Twyla Tharp
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Whether it's a painter finding his way each morning to the easel, or a medical researcher returning daily to the laboratory, the routine is as much a part of the creative process as the lightning bolt of inspiration, maybe more.
Twyla Tharp
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While most people in the arts think they have to be constantly looking forward to be edgy and creative....the real secret of creativity is to go back and remember.
Twyla Tharp
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Usually kids who are talented have the brashness to think they can do anything, but they don't often get the chance to see how close they can come.
Twyla Tharp
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The disasteris not the money, although the money will be missed. The disaster is the disrespect--this belief that the arts are dispensable, that they're not critical to a culture's existence.
Twyla Tharp
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A dancer's life is all about repetition.
Twyla Tharp