Twyla Tharp Quotes

77 Sourced Quotes

Art is the only way to run away without leaving home.

Twyla Tharp
Solitude is an unavoidable part of creativity. Self-reliance is a happy by-product.

Twyla Tharp
A tough manager will have realistic quotas for his employees that he keeps to himself and aggressively stretch quotas, anywhere from ten percent higher to a lot more, which he imposes on his staff. If his people miss the stretch numbers but exceed the realistic goals, he's happy. If he's a superb manager, he knows how far they can stretch without breaking.

Twyla Tharp
You're only kidding yourself if you put creativity before craft.

Twyla Tharp
To embrace luck, you have to enhance your tolerance for ambiguity.

Twyla Tharp
You don't have a really good idea until you combine two little ideas.

Twyla Tharp
After so many years, I've learned that being creative is a full-time job with its own daily patterns. That's why writers, for example, like to establish routines for themselves. The most productive ones get started early in the morning, when the world is quiet, the phones aren't ringing, and their minds are rested, alert, and not yet polluted by other people's words.

Twyla Tharp
Energy and time are finite resources; conserving them is very important.

Twyla Tharp
I'm willing to be regarded as a tyrant to keep my vision intact.

Twyla Tharp
Once you accept the power of spine in the creative act, you will become much more efficient in your creativity. You will still get lost on occasion, but having a spine will anchor you.

Twyla Tharp
Every dance I make is a dive into this well of ancient memory.

Twyla Tharp
The blank space can be humbling. But I've faced it my whole professional life. It's my job. It's also my calling. Bottom line: Filling this empty space constitutes my identity.

Twyla Tharp
When it all comes together, a creative life has the nourishing power we normally associate with food, love, and faith.

Twyla Tharp
I began to discriminate between fear and excitement. The two, though very close, are completely different. Fear is negative excitement, choking your imagination. Real excitement produces an energy that overcomes apprehension and makes you want to close in on your goal.

Twyla Tharp
You can keep on chewing gum for ten hours, but after about a minute and a half you've got all the good out of it.

Twyla Tharp
Metaphor is the lifeblood of all art, if it is not art itself.

Twyla Tharp
Creativity is more about taking the facts, fictions, and feelings we store away and finding new ways to connect them. What we're talking about here is metaphor. Metaphor is the lifeblood of all art, if it is not art itself. Metaphor is our vocabulary for connecting what we are experiencing now with what we have experienced before. It's not only how we express what we remember, it's how we interpret it - for ourselves and others.

Twyla Tharp
Traveling the paths of greatness, even in someone else's footprints, is a vital means to acquiring skill.

Twyla Tharp
But obligation, I eventually saw, is not the same as commitment, and it's certainly not an acceptable reason to stick with something that isn't working

Twyla Tharp
Obligation is a flimsy base for creativity, way down the list behind passion, courage, instinct, and the desire to do something great.

Twyla Tharp
I repeat the wake-up, the workout, the quick shower, the breakfast of three hard-boiled egg whites and a cup of coffee, the hour to make my morning calls and deal with correspondence, the two hours of stretching and working out ideas by myself in the studio... That's my day, every day. A dancer's life is all about repetition.

Twyla Tharp
Reading, conversation, environment, culture, heroes, mentors, nature — all are lottery tickets for creativity. Scratch away at them and you'll find out how big a prize you've won.

Twyla Tharp
I've always thought my creative life began the moment my mother named me Twyla.

Twyla Tharp
Don't sign on for more problems than you must. Resist the temptation to involve yourself in other people's zones of expertise and responsibility. Monitor troublesome situations if you need to, but don't insert yourself unless you're running out of time and a solution is nowhere in sight. In short, stifle your inner control freak.

Twyla Tharp
Some people resent the idea of luck. Accepting the role of chance in our lives suggests that our creations and triumphs are not entirely our own, and that in some way we're undeserving of our success. I say, Get over it. This is how the world works. In creative endeavors luck is a skill.

Twyla Tharp
Dancing is like bank robbery. It takes split-second timing.

Twyla Tharp
You may wonder which came first: the skill or the hard work. But that's a moot point. The Zen master cleans his own studio. So should you.

Twyla Tharp
Living had little use for me other than how it could be funneled into dance.

Twyla Tharp
Everything is raw material. Everything is relevant. Everything is usable. Everything feeds into my creativity. But without proper preparation, I cannot see it, retain it, and use it.

Twyla Tharp
When you're in a rut, you have to question everything except your ability to get out of it.

Twyla Tharp