Martha Graham Quotations

You are unique, and if that is not fulfilled, then something has been lost.

Misery is a communicable disease.

Great dancers are not great because of their technique, they are great because of their passion.

First we have to believe, and then we believe.

Some men have thousands of reasons why they cannot do what they want to, when all they need is one reason why they can.

I did not want to be a tree, a flower or a wave. In a dancer's body, we as audience must see ourselves, not the imitated behavior of everyday actions, not the phenomenon of nature, not exotic creatures from another planet, but something of the miracle that is a human being.

'Age' is the acceptance of a term of years. But maturity is the glory of years.

Fire is the test of gold; adversity, of strong men.

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 time, this expression is unique.

Every dance is a kind of fever chart, a graph of the heart.

Practice means to perform, over and over again in the face of all obstacles, some act of vision, of faith, of desire. Practice is a means of inviting the perfection desired.

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.

We learn by practice. Whether it means to learn to dance by practicing dancing or to learn to live by practicing living, the principles are the same. One becomes in some area an athlete of God.

Dance is the hidden language of the soul of the body.

The body is your instrument in dance, but your art is outside that creature, the body.

To me, a building - if it's beautiful - is the love of one man, he's made it out of his love for space, materials, things like that.

No artist is ahead of his time. He is his time; it is just that others are behind the times.

Theater is a verb before it is a noun, an act before it is a place.

I am unbelievably relieved. He is one of the best kids in the world.

Who has not found the Heaven below / Will fail of it above ... His eagerness, his voracity, a blood memory, in the sense that he can extract more from his life than what he has really lived. He must have a will to explore unknown feelings and dare to feel them. This may seem terrifying, but it has to be done because there is no other option.

Dance is the hidden language of the soul.

the instrument by which the dance expresses itself is also the instrument by which life is lived: the human body.

I never thought of myself as being a genius. I don't know what genius is. I think a far better expression is a retriever, a lovely strong golden retriever that brings things back from the past, or retrieves things from our common blood memory

I want to make people feel intensely alive. I'd rather have them against me than indifferent.

It's not my job to look beautiful. It's my job to look interesting.

It is difficult to see the great dance effects as they happen, to see them accurately, catch them fast in memory. It is even more difficult to verbalize them for critical discussion. The particular essence of a performance, its human sweep of articulate rhythm in space and in time has no specific terminology to describe it by.

I don't try to tell the dancers exactly what a dance means before they do it.

To me, this acquirement of nervous, physical, and emotional concentration is the one element possessed to the highest degree by the truly great dancers of the world. Its acquirement is the result of discipline, of energy in the deep sense. That is why there are so few great dancers.

Pity is a corroding thing.

It takes about ten years to make a mature dancer. The training is twofold. There is the study and practice of the craft in order to strengthen the muscular structure of the body. The body is shaped, disciplined, honored, and in time, trusted. The movement become clean, precise, eloquent, truthful. Movement never lies. It is a barometer telling the state of the soul's weather to all who can read it. This might be called the law of the dancer's life, the law which governs its outer aspects

How many leaps did Nijinksy take before he made the one that startled the world? He took thousands and thousands and it is that legend that gives us the courage, the energy, and arrogance to go back into the studio knowing that while there is so little time to be born to the instant, you will work again among the many that you may once more be born as one. That is a dancer's world.

I get up, I fall down, all the while I am dancing.

I have heard stories that it was love at first sight for both of us, that we disappeared to a guest room at Merle's house, had our meals sent up, and didn't emerge for several days. This is absolutely untrue. I would never behave like that as a guest in someone's home. Carlos and I went to my beach house.

I believe that we learn by practice.

When you start with an idea, or something hits you, then you have to follow that through to the end, and it's the following through to the end that makes the pattern. That, for me, is choreography.

I believe that we learn by practice... it is the performance of a dedicated precise set of acts, physical or intellectual, from which come shape of achievement, a sense of one's being, a satisfaction of spirit.

Some of you are doomed to be artists.

Nobody cares if you can't dance well.

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.

You don't pick dance. Dance picks you.

My childhood years were a balance of dark and light.

Theater used to be a verb; it used to be an act. But nowadays it is just a noun. It is a place.

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.

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.

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.

What I do must be done in the sunlight of awareness.

I think comedy is the most difficult thing in the world, I really do.

If I can't dance, I don't care if my dances are ever done again!

Discipline is liberation.

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.

If you feel depressed you shouldn't go out on the street because it will show on your face and you'll give it to others. Misery is a communicable disease.

Every dance is a kind of fever chart, a graph of the heart. The instrument through which the dance speaks is also the instrument through which life is lived ... the human body.

Dancers have more bones than most people and on the days when you work hard you are sure that you have somehow accumulated more bones than you started with.

There is fatigue so great that the body cries, even in its sleep.

...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.

The body is a sacred garment.

All things I do are in every woman. Every woman is Medea. Every woman is Jocasta. There comes a time when a woman is a mother to her husband. Clytemnestra is every woman when she kills.

Repetition not for monotony but the ecstasy it induces.

The gesture is the thing truly expressive of the individual - as we think so will we act.

Dance is the landscape of man's soul.

What makes a great dancer is not technique. What makes a great dancer is passion.

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.

The world I'm interested in is the one where things are not named.

You see, when weaving a blanket, an Indian woman leaves a flaw in the weaving of that blanket to let the soul out.

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.

Modern dance isn't anything except one thing in my mind: the freedom of women in America.

Art is eternal for it reveals the inner landscape which is the soul of man.

The past is not dead; it is not even past. People live on inner time; the moment in which a decisive thought or feeling takes place can be at any time. Timeless feelings are common to all of us.

There is only one you in all time.

I believe one thing: that today is yesterday and tomorrow is today and you can't stop.

It takes ten years, usually, to make a dancer. It takes ten years of handling the instrument, handling the material with which you are dealing, for you to know it completely.

The only sin is mediocrity.

Dancing is a very living art. It is essentially of the moment, although a very old art. A dancer's art is lived while he is dancing. Nothing is left of his art except the pictures and the memories--when his dancing days are over.

The next time you look into the mirror, just look at the way the ears rest next to the head; look at the way the hairline grows; think of all the little bones in your wrist. It is a miracle. And the dance is a celebration of that miracle.

It's what I always wanted to do, to show the laughter, the fun, the joy of dance.

You will only get out of a dance class what you bring to it. Learn by practice.

Dance is communication, and so the great challenge is to speak clearly, beautifully and with inevitability.

Sometimes it's blood memory... not the blood your mother and father gave you... but that which stretches back two or three thousand years.

It is not your business to determine how good it is, nor how valuable it is, nor how it compares with other expressions. It is your business to keep it yours clearly and directly, to keep the channel open.

Nothing is more revealing than movement.

America does not concern itself now with Impressionism. We own no involved philosophy. The psyche of the land is to be found in its movement. It is to be felt as a dramatic force of energy and vitality. We move; we do not stand still. We have not yet arrived at the stock-taking stage.

I love words very much. I've always loved to talk, and I've always love words — the words that rest in your mouth, what words mean and how you taste them and so on. And for me the spoken word can be used almost as a gesture.

I am absorbed in the magic of movement and light. Movement never lies. It is the magic of what I call the outer space of the imagination.

We look at the dance to impart the sensation of living in an affirmation of life, to energize the spectator into keener awareness of the vigor, the mystery, the humor, the variety, and the wonder of life. This is the function of the American dance.

The secret to dancing is that it is about everything except dancing.

In a dancer, there is a reverence for such forgotten things as the miracle of the small beautiful bones and their delicate strength.

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.

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.

Freedom to a dancer means discipline. That is what technique is for -- liberation.

Dance is a song of the body. Either of joy or pain.

Dancers today can do anything; the technique is phenomenal. The passion and the meaning to their movement can be another thing.

No artist is pleased. There is no satisfaction whatever at any time. There is only a strange, divine dissatisfaction , a blessed unrest that keeps us marching and makes us more alive than the others.

The unique must be fulfilled.

The body is shaped, disciplined, honored, and in time, trusted.

No animal ever has an ugly body until it is domesticated. It is the same with the human body.

In 1980, a well-meaning fundraiser came to see me and said, "Miss Graham, the most powerful thing you have going for you to raise money is your respectability." I wanted to spit. Respectable! Show me any artist who wants to be respectable.

Dancers are the messengers of the gods.

In the end, it all comes down to the art of breathing.

Practice is a means of inviting the perfection desired.

The center of the stage is where I am.