Top 200 Twyla Tharp Quotes (2025 Update)
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51. “Too much planning implies you’ve got it all under control. That’s boring, unrealistic, and dangerous.”

— Twyla Tharp

52. “By making the start of the sequence automatic, they replace doubt and fear with comfort and routine.”

— Twyla Tharp

53. “Everything is raw material. Everything is relevant. Everything is usable.”

— Twyla Tharp

54. “I think of music as fuel, its spectrum of energy governed by tempi, volume, and heart.”

— Twyla Tharp

55. “Traveling the paths of greatness, even in someone else’s footprints, is a vital means to acquiring skill.”

— Twyla Tharp

56. “Art is an investigation.”

— Twyla Tharp

57. “I am magnetically drawn to images, whether they’re paintings, photographs, film, or video. They are all lodestones of inspiration to me.”

— Twyla Tharp

58. “There’s an energy that comes through the release of tension that is laughter.”

— Twyla Tharp

59. “You are never lonely when the mind is engaged.”

— Twyla Tharp

60. “I walk into a large white room. It’s a dance studio in midtown Manhattan. The room is clean, virtually spotless if you don’t count the thousands of skid marks and footprints left there by dancers rehearsing. Other than the mirrors, the boom box, the skid marks, and me, the room is empty.”

— Twyla Tharp

61. “Better an imperfect dome in Florence than cathedrals in the clouds.”

— Twyla Tharp

62. “In dreams, anything can be anything, and everybody can do. We can fly, we can turn upside down, we can transform into anything.”

— Twyla Tharp

63. “Everyone has a talent. It’s simply a question of good discipline, of the good fortune to have an education that meshes with that talent, and a lot of luck.”

— Twyla Tharp

64. “In order to be creative, you have to know how to prepare to be creative.”

— Twyla Tharp

65. “Creativity is not just for artists. It’s for businesspeople looking for a new way to close a sale; it’s for engineers trying to solve a problem; it’s for parents who want their children to see the world in more than one way.”

— Twyla Tharp

66. “Mastery is an elusive concept. You never know when you achieve it absolutely and it may not help you to feel you’ve attained it. We can recognize it more readily in others than we can in ourselves. We have to discover our own definition of it.”

— Twyla Tharp

67. “Reading, conversation, environment, culture, heroes, mentors, nature – all are lottery tickets for creativity. Scratch away at them and you’ll find out how big a prize you’ve won.”

— Twyla Tharp

68. “A dancer’s life is all about repetition.”

— Twyla Tharp

69. “You’re only kidding yourself if you put creativity before craft.”

— Twyla Tharp

70. “You don’t have a really good idea until you combine two little ideas.”

— Twyla Tharp

71. “The content and thematic materials of dance is, of itself, like boxing. You play tennis and baseball. But boxing is not a sport you play: you stand up and do it.”

— Twyla Tharp

72. “My mother was the first woman in the county in Indiana where we were born, in Jay County, to have a college degree. She was educated as a pianist and she wanted to concertize, but when the war came she was married, had a family, so she started teaching.”

— Twyla Tharp

73. “Once you accept the power of spine in the creative act, you will become much more efficient in your creativity. You will still get lost on occasion, but having a spine will anchor you.”

— Twyla Tharp

74. “Without passion, all the skill in the world won’t lift you above craft. Without skill, all the passion in the world will leave you eager but floundering. Combining the two is the essence of the creative life.”

— Twyla Tharp

75. “I read for growth, firmly believing that what you are today and what you will be in five years depends on two things: the people you meet and the books you read.”

— Twyla Tharp

76. “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.”

— Twyla Tharp

77. “There’s nothing wrong with fear; the only mistake is to let it stop you in your tracks.”

— Twyla Tharp

78. “You have to believe there’s something at the other side. And you have to have faith in yourself. You have to think that you have the tools to accomplish it.”

— Twyla Tharp

79. “Obligation is a flimsy base for creativity, way down the list behind passion, courage, instinct, and the desire to do something great.”

— Twyla Tharp

80. “Whether or not God has kissed your brow, you still have to work. Without learning and preparation, you won’t know how to harness the power of that kiss.”

— Twyla Tharp

81. “The notion of the hero as outsider, as alien, is forget it, over, done with. It’s not about being against society anymore. It’s about standing there, holding something up. It’s not pulling away.”

— Twyla Tharp

82. “Life is about moving, it’s about change. And when things stop doing that they’re dead.”

— Twyla Tharp

83. “I have always felt one of the things dance should do – its business being so clearly physical – is challenge the culture’s gender stereotypes.”

— Twyla Tharp

84. “The more you fail in private, the less you will fail in public.”

— Twyla Tharp

85. “The ballet needs to tell its own story in such a way it can be received without having to be translated into language.”

— Twyla Tharp

86. “This is the hard part. Knowing and admitting a problem are not the same as solving it. But executing a solution is also the fun part, because the solution save you and gets you moving again.”

— Twyla Tharp

87. “Any comic is a tragic soul. Comedy is one of the things that allows one to survive. Particularly if one has been in the process of separating off the emotions, it’s one place you can process them.”

— Twyla Tharp

88. “I work because I have issues and questions and feelings and thoughts that I want to have a look at. I’m not in need of, or wanting, particularly, to know what other folk are up to.”

— Twyla Tharp

89. “Every dance I make is a dive into this well of ancient memory.”

— Twyla Tharp

90. “Whether it’s a painter finding his way each morning to the easel, or a medical researcher returning daily to the laboratory, the routine is as much a part of the creative process as the lightning bolt of inspiration, maybe more.”

— Twyla Tharp

91. “A lot of people insisted on a wall between modern dance and ballet. I’m beginning to think that walls are very unhealthy things.”

— Twyla Tharp

92. “The thing about creativity is, people are going to laugh at it. Get over it.”

— Twyla Tharp

93. “It is extremely arrogant and very foolish to think that you can ever outwit your audience.”

— Twyla Tharp

94. “I was valedictorian. Did I enjoy going to school? I hated it. It wasn’t a choice on my part, it was expected.”

— Twyla Tharp

95. “I think that anyone who’s pushed to do the very best that they can is privileged. It’s a luxury.”

— Twyla Tharp

96. “I started formal piano training when I was 4. From there I had little violas, and I had dancing lessons of every sort and description, and painting lessons. I had German. And shorthand.”

— Twyla Tharp

97. “In those long and sleepless nights when I’m unable to shake my fears sufficiently, I borrow a biblical epigraph from Dostoyevsky’s The Demons: I see my fears being cast into the bodies of wild boars and hogs, and I watch them rush to a cliff where they fall to their deaths.”

— Twyla Tharp

98. “My greatest fear in working is always the end. Lately I have taken to tricking myself into finishing by leaving a hole in the middle somewhere, then stitching the two pieces together – the Union Pacific approach.”

— Twyla Tharp

99. “As people who have commitments and obligations, we try to blockade emotions and go on our course towards excellence, and that’s a lie. I’ve definitely paid a price. Everything is an exchange.”

— Twyla Tharp

100. “I think that probably the moments of discovery do come from a place that is not totally organized. Order is something that we already know about. Discoveries are in a place we don’t already know about.”

— Twyla Tharp