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Without the little ideas, there are no big ideas.

Twyla Tharp

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Twyla Tharp
Age: 83
Born: 1941
Born: July 1
Ballet Dancer
Choreographer
Dancer
Writer
Portland
Indiana
Bigs
Littles
Ideas
Little
Without

More quotes by Twyla Tharp

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There are so few people who can really take hold of art and sort of eat and chew it up. Somehow it's got to be held special, sacred in a corner, and if you don't do the same thing with it, if you're not equally reverential, serious, and pompous about it, well, then you're not a great artist. Who needs that?
Twyla Tharp
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It is extremely arrogant and very foolish to think that you can ever outwit your audience.
Twyla Tharp
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I think Tolstoy had an unbelievably complicated relationship with women.
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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You're only kidding yourself if you put creativity before craft.
Twyla Tharp
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In the not-for-profit world, there can be wastefulness because there's not the desperate urgency of when you're on a clock.
Twyla Tharp
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I walk into a large white room. It's a dance studio in midtown Manhattan. The room is clean, virtually spotless if you don’t count the thousands of skid marks and footprints left there by dancers rehearsing. Other than the mirrors, the boom box, the skid marks, and me, the room is empty.
Twyla Tharp
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We're a machine and we have to be worked in the same way we have to be fed.
Twyla Tharp
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Limits are a secret blessing, and bounty can be a curse.
Twyla Tharp
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That's what improvising is like for me. There's no tollbooth between my impulse and my action.
Twyla Tharp
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Before you can think out of the box, you have to start with a box
Twyla Tharp
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It's very difficult to justify a profession as a dancer.
Twyla Tharp
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Creativity is not just for artists. It's for businesspeople looking for a new way to close a sale it's for engineers trying to solve a problem it's for parents who want their children to see the world in more than one way.
Twyla Tharp
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I was privileged to be able to study a year with Martha Graham, the last year she was teaching.
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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In order to be creative, you have to know how to prepare to be creative.
Twyla Tharp
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Dancers are allowed, indeed encouraged, to remain children forever.
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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No one is born with skill. It is developed through exercise, through repetition, through a blend of learning and reflection that's both painstaking and rewarding. And it takes time.
Twyla Tharp
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If you're speaking of love, you really must include the element of uncertainty - and perhaps it's best approached as the art of constant maintenance.
Twyla Tharp