Quotes from Martha Graham

Sometimes it's blood memory... not the blood your mother and father gave you... but that which stretches back two or three thousand years.

In a dancer, there is a reverence for such forgotten things as the miracle of the small beautiful bones and their delicate strength.

Freedom to a dancer means discipline. That is what technique is for -- liberation.

'Age' is the acceptance of a term of years. But maturity is the glory of years.

Dance is the hidden language of the soul of the body.

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

We look at the dance to impart the sensation of living in an affirmation of life, to energize the spectator into keener awareness of the vigor, the mystery, the humor, the variety, and the wonder of life. This is the function of the American dance

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 a miracle.

Censorship is the height of vanity.

Practice is a means of inviting the perfection desired.

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

The body never lies.

'Age' is the acceptance of a term of years. But maturity is the glory of years.

Movement never lies. It is a barometer telling the state of the soul's weather to all who can read it.

You see, when weaving a blanket, an Indian woman leaves a flaw in the weaving of that blanket to let the soul out.

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

The body is a sacred garment.

In a dancer, there is a reverence for such forgotten things as the miracle of the small beautiful bones and their delicate strength.

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.

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.

I am a dancer. I believe that we learn by practice. Whether it means to learn to dance by practicing dancing or to learn to live by practicing living.... In each it is the performance of a dedicated precise set of acts, physical or intellectual, from which comes shape of achievement, a sense of one's being, a satisfaction of spirit. One becomes in some area an athlete of God.

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

The body says what words cannot.