Top 18 Quotes & Sayings by Meredith Monk

I think about that 'empty' space a lot. That emptiness is what allows for something to actually evolve in a natural way. I've had to learn that over the years - because one of the traps of being an artist is to always want to be creating, always wanting to produce.

Sometimes in the past when I was going to perform a piece again I would listen to old recordings and try to reproduce the material. This time I realized that carrying around old information, trying to get everything in, and still be in the moment just doesn't work.

I have always believed that we all have male and female within us.

I've never had an empty house. Ever.

Yes, the more I go through life I realize that there's really no separation between practice and art at all. The two things more and more become one rather than two different aspects of my life.

When you start worrying about form, then you're not in the moment.

It's been a continuity right from the beginning - that longing to weave together perceptions, to affirm the richness of us as human beings both as performers and audience members.

That inner voice has both gentleness and clarity. So to get to authenticity, you really keep going down to the bone, to the honesty, and the inevitability of something.

I somehow sensed when I was a teenager that I wanted to do my own work. I was quite clear that I didn't want to be an interpretative kind of artist. I had an intuition about wanting to create my own form, in one way or another, whatever that would be.

In the late '70s I was asked to sing for the first time in Germany. I'll never forget it. It was at a festival in Bremen. The German audience went berserk and the reviews were a phenomenon. For some reason the German audience understood how technically challenging this music was; it wasn't just someone yelling their head off.

When I'm an audience member I do not want to go and see something that I already know, I want to see something that I don't know. I want to be surprised and stimulated to think about something. I want the magic. I want to be in a situation of uncertainty; that's what excites me.

As artists, I think that one of the good qualities we have is that we're imaginative. We're resourceful. We like challenges.

My partner sometimes liked to go into the studio and improvise voice things just for fun. When I returned from England I transcribed one of her melodies, and had some of the hospice participants sing it, because they said they liked to sing. Their singing is very raw, but I'm going to use it for the final work.

(There is) art that states the problems of society and wakes people up to make changes in their lives or in their communities,...art that offers an alternative, that demonstrates human behavior that can become a model for creativity, cooperation, freedom and playfulness, and...art that in itself provides glimpses of a larger consciousness or reflects upon the inexplicable.

Curiosity is a great antidote to fear.

I work in between the cracks, where the voice starts dancing, where the body starts singing, where theater becomes cinema.

I think about that "empty" space a lot. That emptiness is what allows for something to actually evolve in a natural way. I've had to learn that over the years - because one of the traps of being an artist is to always want to be creating, always wanting to produce.

My music is very, very precise. It's very rigorous. The forms are much more intricate than you would imagine.