Twyla Tharp

“Nobody worked harder than Mozart. By the time he was twenty-eight years old, his hands were deformed because of all the hours he had spent practicing, performing, and gripping a quill pen to compose. That's the missing element in the popular portrait of Mozart.”

“Modern dancers should be doing things no one else is doing, and it should come from the gut.”

“When I look at the people who are the guiding figures in modern dance, I think, 'This does not look to me like the way I want to spend my days.'”

“If a thing moves, it lives.”

“I was privileged to be able to study a year with Martha Graham, the last year she was teaching.”

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

“What is music about? You can't listen to one era, one composer, and know what music is about.”

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

“I see dance as glue for a community.”

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

“I'm not interested in seeing dance die. It's not to my advantage. Nor is it to our culture's advantage or anybody else's.”

“There is a moral dimension, for me, in anything that's any good.”

“I think Tolstoy had an unbelievably complicated relationship with women.”

“I've always believed that a dance evening energizes an audience, that an audience goes out feeling chemically stronger and more optimistic. This is what I understand about dance. And this is an important thing. We need this. Our culture needs it.”

“Creativity is an act of defiance.”

“It was not until I had graduated from college that I made a professional commitment to it. Frankly, I didn't think it wise. I was my own interior parental force, and it's very difficult to justify a profession as a dancer.”

“I'm not satisfied sitting in just the world of abstract work.”

“The rewards of dancing are very different from choreographing.”

“I would have to challenge the term, modern dance. I don't really use that term in relation to my work. I simply think of it as dancing. I think of it as moving.”

“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.”