Quotes from Martha Graham

The body is shaped, disciplined, honored, and in time, trusted.

All things I do are in every woman. Every woman is Medea. Every woman is Jocasta. There comes a time when a woman is a mother to her husband. Clytemnestra is every woman when she kills.

The body is a sacred garment.

Censorship is the height of vanity.

There is only one of you in all time, this expression is unique. And if you block it, it will never exist through any other medium and it will be lost.

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.

The spine is the tree of life. Respect it.

The only sin is mediocrity.

The body says what words cannot.

No artist is ahead of his time. He is his time. It is just that others are behind the time.

The body never lies.

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

Misery is a communicable disease.

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

Modern dance isn't anything except one thing in my mind: the freedom of women in America.

Art is eternal for it reveals the inner landscape which is the soul of man.

Nothing is more revealing than movement.

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

Dancers have more bones than most people and on the days when you work hard you are sure that you have somehow accumulated more bones than you started with.

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

In the end, it all comes down to the art of breathing.

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

Dance is communication, and so the great challenge is to speak clearly, beautifully and with inevitability.

Practice means to perform, over and over again in the face of all obstacles, some act of vision, of faith, of desire. Practice is a means of inviting the perfection desired.