Top 131 Quotes & Sayings by Martha Graham - Page 3

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.

Nobody cares if you can't dance well.

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.

I believe that we learn by practice.

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

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

Pity is a corroding thing.

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.

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 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.

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.