Martha Graham Quotes

If you have anything really valuable to contribute to the world it will come through the expression of your own personality, that single spark of divinity that sets you off and makes you different from every other living creature.

There is a vitality, a life force, a quickening that is translated through you into action, and because 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 be lost. The world will not have it. It is not your business to determine how good it is, not how it compares with other expression. It is your business to keep it yours clearly and directly, to keep the channel open.

The only success worth one's powder was success in the line of one's idiosyncrasy... what was talent but the art of being completely whatever one happened to be?

The one thing that you have that nobody else has is you. Your voice, your mind, your story, your vision. So write and draw and build and play and dance and live as only you can.

If you think about what everyone else will think, you forget to just make music.

Your individuality is the most valuable thing you have.

What I tell people is be the best version of yourself in anything that you do. You don't have to live anybody else's story.

I'm a smart enough person to know that I don't want everyone to be cookie-cutter versions of the nine guys who wear Converse sneakers.

The essence of a sound style is that it cannot be reduced to rules-that it is a living and breathing thing with something of the devilish in it-that it fits its proprietor tightly yet ever so loosely, as his skin fits him. It is, in fact, quite as seriously an integral part of him as that skin is. . . . In brief, a style is always the outward and visible symbol of a man, and cannot be anything else.

It's boring to be like everybody.

Don't be someone else's slogan because you are poetry.

This, I believe, is the great Western truth: that each of us is a completely unique creature and that, if we are ever to give any gift to the world, it will have to come out of our own experience and fulfillment of our own potentialities, not someone else's.

Many people wait throughout their whole lives for the chance to be good in their own fashion.

I'm not even sure I have a style! All I know for sure is I don't want to look like everyone else.

To the extent that independent means you're willing to attempt to put your own ideas, personality, and commitment to the material on screen, then of course I hope I'm independent until the day I die.

I've never really tried to copy anyone; I like to have my own style.

I don't have any influences, any heroes, it's just me.

The best advice I've received is to be yourself. The best artists do that.

There is only one me.

My style is all to myself.

While we have the gift of life, it seems to me the only tragedy is to allow part of us to die - whether it is our spirit, our creativity or our glorious uniqueness.

Even if you try to copy a film shot by shot, you still can't. It's still your own film.

I think the greatest of people that have ever been in society, they were never versions of someone else. They were themselves.

I always say that I don't like it when people follow trends too much, just because it is on the runway. I think what you wear really does need to reflect what your own personal style is.

When I teach writing, I have a mantra: 'Be a first-rate version of yourself, and not a second-rate version of another writer.'