Martha Graham Quotes

Dancers are made, not born.

Writing is like playing golf - you have to keep working at your swing.

Ballet technique never becomes easy, it becomes possible

I think magic, whether I'm holding my breath or shuffling a deck of cards, is pretty simple. It's practice, it's training, and it's - It's practice, it's training and experimenting, while pushing through the pain to be the best that I can be.

Athletic skills are acquired over a long period of time and after countless hours of practice.

Writing requires a great deal of skill, just like painting does. People don't want to learn those skills.

The best and fastest way to learn a sport is to watch and imitate a champion.

I learned to appreciate repetition. That's why I can dance. It's how I learned to act. I have a high tolerance for repetition.

All of those art-based fields are similar in that they're all hard to make a living in and they all require an intense amount of training and discipline.

You've got to put in a lot of practice if you want to be good in something. You've got to do it the right way.

I used to spend hours on the laptop watching free kicks on YouTube - again and again. You obviously learn a thing or two.

I've always enjoyed dancing, and I train myself in it. I try to hone my skills whenever I get the chance.

The most essential thing in dance discipline is devotion.

I work hard at it [delivery of lyrics], just like I worked hard at getting my masters degree. It's not just something I sit down and do. You have to learn and keep learning.

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, the principles are the same. In each, it is the performance of a dedicated precise set of acts, physical or intellectual, from which comes shape of achievement, a sense of one's being, a satisfaction of spirit. One becomes, in some area, an athlete of God. 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.

If you practice for ten years, you may begin to please yourself, after 20 years you may become a performer and please the audience, after 30 years you may please even your guru, but you must practice for many more years before you finally become a true artist-then you may please even God.

To focus on technique is like cramming your way through school. You sometimes get by, perhaps even get good grades, but if you don't pay the price day in and day out, you'll never achieve true mastery of the subjects you study or develop an educated mind.

Those edges and turns teach control and discipline, just like finger exercises on the piano.

Angling may be said to be so like the mathematics that it can never be fully learned.

Learn to write the same way you learn to play golf. You do it and keep doing it until you get it right.

I practice every day, I warm up before I play.

By concentrating on precision, one arrives at technique, but by concentrating on technique one does not arrive at precision.

Sometimes you have to play a long time to be able to play like yourself.

The more you practice and study, the better you are... so I still practice and study all the time.

You don't know how much artists go through to make it look so easy. It's all in the practice.