Learn by practice. — Martha Graham

Practice is a means of inviting the perfection desired. — Martha Graham

I believe that we learn by practice. — Martha Graham

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… — Martha Graham

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. — Martha Graham

We learn by practice. Whether it means to learn to dance by practicing dancing or to learn to live by practicing living, the principles are the same. One becomes in some area an athlete of God. — Martha Graham

You will only get out of a dance class what you bring to it. Learn by practice. — Martha Graham

I get up, I fall down, all the while I am dancing. — Martha Graham

Dancing is very like poetry. — Martha Graham

Dancing is just discovery, discovery, discovery. — Martha Graham

The secret to dancing is that it is about everything except dancing. — Martha Graham

The body never lies.’ Martha Graham — Martha Graham

The body is a sacred garment. — Martha Graham

No animal ever has an ugly body until it is domesticated. It is the same with the human body. — Martha Graham

The body says what words cannot. — Martha Graham

There is fatigue so great that the body cries, even in its sleep. — Martha Graham

Dance is a song of the body. Either of joy or pain. — Martha Graham

The function of the body and the awareness of the body results in dance and you become a dancer, not just a human being. — Martha Graham

You can be Eastern or Burmese or what have you, but the function of the body and the awareness of the body results in dance and you become a dancer, not just a human being. — Martha Graham

To me, the body says what words cannot. I believe that dance was the first art. — Martha Graham

There is a fatigue so great that the body cries, even in its sleep. There are times of complete frustration; there are daily small deaths. — Martha Graham

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

I use the words gods and goddesses principally, I think, to mean beautiful bodies–bodies that are absolute instruments. And I believe in discipline, I believe in a very definite technique. — Martha Graham

The body is a sacred garment. It’s your first and last garment; it is what you enter life in and what you depart life with, and it should be treated with honor. — Martha Graham

Every dance is a kind of fever chart, a graph of the heart. The instrument through which the dance speaks is also the instrument through which life is lived … the human body. — Martha Graham

If I can’t dance, I don’t care if my dances are ever done again! — Martha Graham

I don’t try to tell the dancers exactly what a dance means before they do it. — Martha Graham

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

I hope that every dance I do reveals something of myself or some wonderful thing a human can be. — Martha Graham

It’s what I always wanted to do, to show the laughter, the fun, the joy of dance. — Martha Graham

Nobody cares if you can’t dance well. Just get up and dance. — Martha Graham

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

Nobody cares if you can’t dance well. Just get up and dance. Great dancers are great because of their passion. — Martha Graham

I have spent all my life with dance and being a dancer. It’s permitting life to use you in a very intense way. Sometimes it is not pleasant. Sometimes it is fearful. But nevertheless it is inevitable. — Martha Graham

Modern dance isn’t anything except one thing in my mind: the freedom of women in America. — Martha Graham

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

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

Dance is the landscape of man’s soul. — Martha Graham

I feel that the essence of dance is the expression of man–the landscape of his soul. — Martha Graham

Nothing is more revealing than movement. — Martha Graham

Dancers today can do anything; the technique is phenomenal. The passion and the meaning to their movement can be another thing. — Martha Graham

All that is important is this one moment in movement. Make the moment important, vital, and worth living. Do not let it slip away unnoticed and unused. — Martha Graham

My dancing is not an attempt to interpret life in the literary sense. It is an affirmation of life through movement. — Martha Graham

A dancer must listen to his body and pay homage to it. Behind the movement lies this terrible, driving passion, this necessity. I won’t settle for anything less. — Martha Graham

I am absorbed in the magic of movement and light. Movement never lies. It is the magic of what I call the outer space of the imagination. — Martha Graham

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

People have asked me why I chose to be a dancer. I did not choose. I was chosen to be a dancer, and with that, you live all your life. — Martha Graham

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

The spine is the tree of life. Respect it. — Martha Graham

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

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

We are all of us, unique–each a unique pattern of creativity and if we do not fulfill it, it is lost for all time. — Martha Graham

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

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

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. — Martha Graham

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

At the time I started in ballet they were dancing ‘The Spirit of Champagne’ on pointe, in Paris. I thought, ‘I don’t want to dance the spirit of champagne, I want to drink it! — Martha Graham

No artist is pleased. There is no satisfaction whatever at any time. There is only a queer, divine dissastifaction; a blessed unrest that keeps us marching and makes us more alive than the others. — Martha Graham

There is a vitality, a life force, an energy, a quickening that is translated through you into action, and because there is only one of you in all of time, this expression is unique. — Martha Graham

Theater used to be a verb; it used to be an act. But nowadays it is just a noun. It is a place. — Martha Graham