Martha Graham Quotes

I think subconsciously or selfishly I knew that I was supposed to do something. It was like a thumping or a throbbing saying, "Yes, this what you've been waiting for." But you're a little dim to those spiritual thoughts when you're dumb like me. So I did have to get a little bit of a kick. I played it for a bunch of people and I think their reactions were warm and deep enough that they gave me the courage to get [the record] out there.

I have never sought the reason why I write.

I like to work on records when I feel inspired, not because it's expected of me.

I want to create. I think that's the one word I can grow on.

Rational thoughts never drive people's creativity the way emotions do.

Inspiration may be a form of super-consciousness, or perhaps of subconsciousness I wouldn't know. But I am sure it is the antithesis of self-consciousness.

Inspiration doesn't really work like that - you're not looking out for it. Inspiration is something that tends to capture you rather than you capture it.

If I were to try and find a unifying emotion that kept me calm and focused while I was dancing or writing or solving a math problem, I think the one unifying thing about all those that keeps my interest is creativity.

When I'm writing [songs], some days the pen just goes. I'm not in charge and I'm almost listening outside of it. That's when I realize that we all have to start looking at life as a gift. It's like listening to a color and believing that these colors have soul mates and once you get them all together the painting is complete.

Sometimes you feel like you have to do research to make something, other times you know you don't feel it so much.

Inspiration cannot be willed, though it can be wooed.

My discussion with Keith Richards about the creative process led me to believe that there's an invisible presence of a stream of ever-flowing creativity that we overhear-all you have to do is pull up the antenna and dial it in. This presence allows you to maintain your sense of origin and move forward.

It is truly excellent to have someone believe in you and your ability to write. But I think it is just as helpful to have people who don't believe in you, people who mock you, people who doubt you, people who enrage you. Fortunately, there is never a shortage of this type of person in the world ... write for yourself. Write for the story. And write, also, for all of the people who doubt you. Write for all those people who are not brave enough to do this grand and wondrous thing themselves. Let them motivate you.

Discipline is the servant of inspiration.

Nothing really came, everything was like inspired by something.

When I recorded my first album, my ego didn't let me believe that what I was gonna say on the mic, anyone would really care about. But then when I found out that they did, I started to take it more seriously.

You can start something, do it, and believe that that's what you're doing, but then the inspiration comes and it's like, "Nope, this is what it is."

You sit and you let your fingers go to wherever they are going to go. You wait until you start to hear something, and you start to figure out what it is that you're doing. And then you add another piece next to that piece, and wait to see if some kind of pattern or something interesting starts to grow, and then you cultivate it.

What you dream, you can grow. Someone told me that, but I didn't believe it. I said I had nothing and that people with nothing are unable to dream. But I was wrong.

People pay to see others believe in themselves.

I'm never quite sure how the poem is going to resolve itself and that I'm always in some way surprised. I make a discovery in a poem as I write it.

The artwork had very little to do with the thought process, and the writing too, for that matter. What happens, happens, and it happens outside the brain.

Your mood doesn't really matter. Some of the best creative work gets done on the days when you feel that everything you're doing is just plain junk.

A GREAT PAINTER will know a great deal about how he did it, but still he will say, “How did I do it?

First thought is best in Art, second in other matters.