Top 100 Martha Graham Quotes (2025 Update)
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51. “Theater is a verb before it is a noun, an act before it is a place.”

— Martha Graham

52. “Dancers are the messengers of the gods.”

— Martha Graham

53. “Nothing is more revealing than movement.”

— Martha Graham

54. “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.”

— Martha Graham

55. “You don’t pick dance. Dance picks you.”

— Martha Graham

56. “There is a force, a quickness that is translated through you into action. If you block it, the world will not have it...”

— Martha Graham

57. “What I do must be done in the sunlight of awareness.”

— Martha Graham

58. “I want to make people feel intensely alive. I’d rather have them against me than indifferent.”

— Martha Graham

59. “Pity is a corroding thing.”

— Martha Graham

60. “I believe one thing: that today is yesterday and tomorrow is today and you can’t stop.”

— Martha Graham

61. “It takes ten years, usually, to make a dancer. It takes ten years of handling the instrument, handling the material with which you are dealing, for you to know it completely.”

— Martha Graham

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

— Martha Graham

63. “I am certain that movement never lies. There is only one law of posture I have been able to discover – the perpendicular line connecting heaven and earth.”

— Martha Graham

64. “I feel that the essence of dance is the expression of man – the landscape of his soul. I hope that every dance I do reveals something of myself or some wonderful thing a human can be.”

— Martha Graham

65. “You will only get out of a dance class what you bring to it. Learn by practice.”

— Martha Graham

66. “The past is not dead; it is not even past. People live on inner time; the moment in which a decisive thought or feeling takes place can be at any time. Timeless feelings are common to all of us.”

— Martha Graham

67. “The secret to dancing is that it is about everything except dancing.”

— Martha Graham

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

— Martha Graham

69. “To me, the body says what words cannot. I believe that dance was the first art.”

— Martha Graham

70. “Misery is a communicable disease.”

— Martha Graham

71. “The reason dance has held such an ageless magic for the world is that it has been the symbol of the performance of living.”

— Martha Graham

72. “You have no right to go before a public without an adequate technique, just because you feel. Anything feels – a leaf feels, a storm feels – what right have you to do that? You have to have speech, and it’s a cultivated speech.”

— Martha Graham

73. “One can always lament, you know – but to laugh in the face of life, that’s very hard. And for me the great tragedian should also be a great comedian.”

— Martha Graham

74. “It’s what I always wanted to do, to show the laughter, the fun, the joy of dance.”

— Martha Graham

75. “I love words very much. I’ve always loved to talk, and I’ve always love words – the words that rest in your mouth, what words mean and how you taste them and so on. And for me the spoken word can be used almost as a gesture.”

— Martha Graham

76. “No animal ever has an ugly body until it is domesticated. It is the same with the human body.”

— Martha Graham

77. “The world I’m interested in is the one where things are not named.”

— Martha Graham

78. “I’m asked so often whether I believe in life after death. I do believe in the sanctity of life, the continuity of life and of energy. I know the anonymity of death has no appeal for me. It is the now that I must face and want to face.”

— Martha Graham

79. “Dancers today can do anything; the technique is phenomenal. The passion and the meaning to their movement can be another thing.”

— Martha Graham

80. “My childhood years were a balance of dark and light.”

— Martha Graham

81. “You give all your life to doing this one thing. It sounds grim, it sounds frightening – it isn’t – it has a great gaiety at times and a great wonder.”

— Martha Graham

82. “Our arms start from the back because they were once wings.”

— Martha Graham

83. “The body is your instrument in dance, but your art is outside that creature, the body. I don’t leap and jump anymore. I look at young dancers, and I am envious, more aware of what glories the body contains. But sensitivity is not made dull by age.”

— Martha Graham

84. “Modern dance isn’t anything except one thing in my mind: the freedom of women in America.”

— Martha Graham

85. “Nothing is more revealing than movement. The body says what words cannot.”

— Martha Graham

86. “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.”

— Martha Graham

87. “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.”

— Martha Graham

88. “Looking at the past is like lolling in a rocking chair. It is so relaxing and you can rock back and forth on the porch, and never go forward.”

— Martha Graham

89. “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.”

— Martha Graham

90. “You do not even have to believe in yourself or your work. You have to keep open and aware directly to the urges that motivate you. Keep the channel open...”

— Martha Graham

91. “Nobody cares if you can’t dance well.”

— Martha Graham

92. “The next time you look into the mirror, just look at the way the ears rest next to the head; look at the way the hairline grows; think of all the little bones in your wrist. It is a miracle. And the dance is a celebration of that miracle.”

— Martha Graham

93. “Dancing is a very living art. It is essentially of the moment, although a very old art. A dancer’s art is lived while he is dancing. Nothing is left of his art except the pictures and the memories – when his dancing days are over.”

— Martha Graham

94. “I never thought of myself as being a genius. I don’t know what genius is. I think a far better expression is a retriever, a lovely strong golden retriever that brings things back from the past, or retrieves things from our common blood memory.”

— Martha Graham

95. “Censorship is the height of vanity.”

— Martha Graham

96. “If I can’t dance, I don’t care if my dances are ever done again!”

— Martha Graham

97. “I did not choose to be a dancer. I was chosen.”

— Martha Graham

98. “First we have to believe, and then we believe.”

— Martha Graham

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

— Martha Graham

100. “I’d rather an audience like me than dislike me, but I’d rather they disliked me than be apathetic, because that is the kiss of death.”

— Martha Graham