Quotes from Twyla Tharp

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

My favorite audience is everybody. I worked in a drive-in theater from the time I was 8 years old until I went to college, and I'm accustomed to everybody can buy a ticket and everybody should be taken into account.

The artist doesn't really think about consequences - he or she does the work, stands back and looks at and thinks, 'Hmm, that could have worked better like this.' But as a person who needs to sell tickets to do the next work, one needs to analyze how it does or does not hit its mark.

Broadway has some very tight expectations as to what a show is.

Energy and time are finite resources; conserving them is very important.

I had to become the greatest choreographer of my time. That was my mission, and that's what I set out to do.

The formal education that I received made little sense to me.

I feel I can handle the architecture of dance as well as anybody.

I realize that dancers have worked long and hard for standards. However, on occasion, I think that it's good to examine one's heart and ask why are we dancing.

Walt Disney was a master of the human psychology. His sense of timing, sense of speed. In a sense, those cartoons are like Rorschach tests.

In those days, male dancers were a rarer breed than women. as they are still today, A good male dancer, one as strong as we were, was very difficult to come by if you couldn't afford to pay them.

When I was a kid, toe dancing and toe shoes had a meaning in our culture as a serious kind of art.

I've read probably 25 or 30 books by Balzac, all of Tolstoy - the novels and letters - and all of Dickens. I learned my craft from these guys.

Just when you arrive at the apex of your skills, it's time to retire. But as it turned out, I decided that since it was the thing that I felt I did best, I owed it to all that be to pursue it.

With each piece I've completed I have worked to make it intact, and each of them has been an equal high. It's like children. A mother refuses to pick out one as a favorite, and I can't do any better with the dances.

Dance should not just divide people into audience and performers. Everyone should be a participant, whether going to classes or attending special events or rehearsals.

There are very few critics who have historical context or authority.

I find the aesthetics of the 20th century hopelessly barren.

I don't think politicians should be allowed into power who are not familiar with their bodies, because that's where our bottom line is. And I know that they would make totally different decisions if they felt responsible simply for their own bodies.

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

We don't need to illustrate music; music illustrates itself.

Balzac loved courtesans. They were independent women, and in the 19th century, that was a breed that was just evolving.

Proust writes, he remembers, physically. He depends on his body to give him the information that will bring him to the past. His book is called 'In Search of Lost Time,' and he does it through the senses. He does it through smell. He does it through feeling. He does it through texture. It is all physically driven, that language.

When it all comes together, a creative life has the nourishing power we normally associate with food, love and faith.