You can only generate ideas when you put pencil to paper, brush to canvas... when you actually do something physical.

- Twyla Tharp

Work is work; wherever I'm working, I do the best I can. If the actual dollars come from investors as opposed to taxpayers and patrons, what's the difference?

- Twyla Tharp

I would have to challenge the term, modern dance. I don't really use that term in relation to my work. I simply think of it as dancing. I think of it as moving.

- Twyla Tharp

'The Creative Habit' is basically about how you work alone, how you survive as a solitary artist. 'The Collaborative Habit' is obviously about surviving with other people.

- Twyla Tharp

The content and thematic materials of dance is, of itself, like boxing. You play tennis and baseball. But boxing is not a sport you play: you stand up and do it.

- Twyla Tharp

What I do remember is visualization of the sound of music, seeing bodies in movement in relation to how music sounded, because my mother practiced at the keyboard a lot and I also went to her lessons. As a two year old, three year old I remember seeing things in movement.

- Twyla Tharp

My father always said, 'I don't care if you're a ditch digger, as long as you're the best ditch digger in the world.'

- Twyla Tharp

My dancers expect me to deliver because my choreography represents their livelihood.

- Twyla Tharp

In dreams, anything can be anything, and everybody can do. We can fly, we can turn upside down, we can transform into anything.

- Twyla Tharp

My mother was the first woman in the county in Indiana where we were born, in Jay County, to have a college degree. She was educated as a pianist and she wanted to concertize, but when the war came she was married, had a family, so she started teaching.

- Twyla Tharp

This is the strange thing: Dancers don't age.

- Twyla Tharp

Art is the only way to run away without leaving home.

- Twyla Tharp

The ballet needs to tell its own story in such a way it can be received without having to be translated into language.

- Twyla Tharp

Dance is the most fundamental of all art forms.

- Twyla Tharp

People often say to me, 'I don't know anything about dance.' I say, 'Stop. You got up this morning, and you're walking. You are an expert.'

- Twyla Tharp

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

To survive, you've got to keep wheedling your way. You can't just sit there and fight against odds when it's not going to work. You have to turn a corner, dig a hole, go through a tunnel - and find a way to keep moving.

- Twyla Tharp

Ultimately there is no such thing as failure. There are lessons learned in different ways.

- Twyla Tharp

At the ballet classes I took when I first came to New York, I would see great dancers like Cynthia Gregory and Lupe Serrano. I would look at them and study what they could do, and what I couldn't do. And then I'd think maybe they should try what I could do.

- Twyla Tharp

Creativity is a habit, and the best creativity is the result of good work habits.

- Twyla Tharp