Quotes from Martha Graham


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


Misery is a communicable disease.


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


The only sin is mediocrity.


The body is a sacred garment.


Nothing is more revealing than movement.


Censorship is the height of vanity.


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


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.


Learn by practice.


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


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


The body never lies.


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


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.


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


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.


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


The body says what words cannot.