Martha Graham Quotes

I believe that a creative career is only as good as the risks that you take with it.

I'm in the studio for hours in that tiny little box, and really, the performing part is what I'm most excited about.

It's like a cast of actors; you're all working together closely under pressure to produce something everyday. And when we put up an issue, it's like the curtains opening on a new play. I really like that daily sense of surprise.

My method is much like choreography. I don't sit at a table. I work in a room with people.

You don't see me in the club. And the reason is because I would rather be in the studio mixing these musical potions. Now sometimes they blow up in my face, and there's a lot of smoke. But that's who I am. Music is what I do.

Filmmaking, I often like to say, is like Russian roulette. You never know what you'll get. The only thing you can do is find solace in the fact that, irrespective of the film's response, you work hard to make the money you do.

There are problems in doing television that have been plaguing me for years. I really like to have a lot of time, to rehearse and make things as good as they can be, but television often doesn't allow for that.

Sometimes if you're in the studio for a very long time, you want to get out and play live shows and vice versa.

It's always important for us to record, so if we're not performing live, that's what we're doing.

Painting is a faith and that it brings with it the duty to pay no heed to public opinion - and that in it one conquers by perseverance and not by giving in.

If you show someone something you've written, you give them a sharpened stake, lie down in your coffin, and say, ‘When you’re ready’.

Who but a brazen crazy person would go one-on-one with blank paper or canvas armed with nothing but ideas?

Making art is an act of courage. Do you know who said that?

You paint the way you have to in order to give. That's life itself, and someone will look and say it is the product of knowing, but it has nothing to do with knowing, it has to do with giving.

I had hardly begun to read I asked how can you ever be sure that what you write is really any good at all and he said you can't you can't you can never be sure you die without knowing whether anything you wrote was any good if you have to be sure don't write

I've just kept on ceaselessly painting in order to learn painting.

If I have a dry spell ... I wait and live harder, eyes, ears, and heart open, and when the productive time comes, it is that much richer.

Being an artist doesn’t take much, just everything you got. Which means, of course, that as the process is giving you life, it is also bringing you closer to death. But it’s no big deal. They are one in the same and cannot be avoided or denied. So when I totally embrace this process, this life/death, and abandon myself to it, I transcend all this meaningless gibberish and hang out with the gods. It seems to me that that is worth the price of admission.

There's a responsibility to the story, but there's also the sense of fun you have. When everybody else leaves, you get to continue to create. For me, there's no other way! I really like creating from the ground up.

My little boy (Sasha) is now one-year-old and that makes it easier for me to go back to the studio and work on creating new music.

There is something else to be said about this immediate, spontaneous way of working, and that is this: in such moments, one is playing at the game of creation.

What I try to do is give each actor an environment in which they can do their best work.

Show up, show up, show up, and after a while the muse shows up, too. If she doesn’t show up invited, eventually she just shows up

The photographer in my head says: Give me peace. Flash. Give me release. Flash.

The simple truth is that being a creative artist takes courage; it’s not a job for the faint of heart. It takes courage each and every time you put a book or poem or painting before the public, because it is, in fact, enormously revealing.