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Concentrate: you can't have it all.

Twyla Tharp

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Twyla Tharp
Age: 83
Born: 1941
Born: July 1
Ballet Dancer
Choreographer
Dancer
Writer
Portland
Indiana
Concentrate
Concentration

More quotes by Twyla Tharp

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When it all comes together, a creative life has the nourishing power we normally associate with food, love and faith.
Twyla Tharp
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Failing, and learning from it, is necessary. Unil you've done it, you're missing an important piece of your creative arsenal.
Twyla Tharp
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Whenever I feel I'm working in a groove it's invariably because I feel I am being the benefactor in the situation rather than the beneficiary. I am sharing my art with others, lending my craft to theirs, interest-free with no IOU.
Twyla Tharp
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Any comic is a tragic soul. Comedy is one of the things that allows one to survive. Particularly if one has been in the process of separating off the emotions, it's one place you can process them.
Twyla Tharp
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I can't emphasize this idea enough. Getting involved with your collaborator's problems almost always distracts you from your own. That can be tempting. That can be a relief. But it usually leads to disaster.
Twyla Tharp
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I had to become the greatest choreographer of my time. That was my mission, and that's what I set out to do.
Twyla Tharp
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I work because I have issues and questions and feelings and thoughts that I want to have a look at. I'm not in need of, or wanting, particularly, to know what other folk are up to.
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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When you stimulate your body, your brain comes alive in ways you can't simulate in a sedentary position.
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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Well, Mozart is extraordinary not only in that he became virtuoso along the lines of his father, but that he had that compositional gift, that melodic gift. By the time he was four, he was doing piano concertos with harmony in the background.
Twyla Tharp
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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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Nobody likes to see that which they've invested in disappear from the face of the earth before they've even died. This is not cool. We can now see what the landmarks, in fact are.
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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There's a paradox in the notion that creativity should be a habit. We think of creativity as a way of keeping everything fresh and new, while habit implies routine and repetition. That paradox intrigues me because it occupies the place where creativity and skill rub up against each other.
Twyla Tharp
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Limits are a secret blessing, and bounty can be a curse.
Twyla Tharp
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A dancer's life is all about repetition.
Twyla Tharp
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Easily acquired. Inexpensive. Perfectly functional. Portable. Identifiable. Disposable. Eternal enough. These are my criteria for the perfect storage system. And I’ve found the answer in the simple file box.
Twyla Tharp
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The art of these Fifties movies was in sustaining forever the moment before sex.
Twyla Tharp
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We get into ruts when we run with the first idea that pops into our head, not the last one.
Twyla Tharp