Tharp's Quotes

#1. Has there ever been a dance career with more ups and downs than Twyla Tharp's? Or with more varied ambitions? Or larger ambition?

Robert Gottlieb

#2. Just when you arrive at the apex of your skills, it's time to retire. But as it turned out, I decided that since it was the thing that I felt I did best, I owed it to all that be to pursue it.

Twyla Tharp

#3. You have to believe there's something at the other side. And you have to have faith in yourself. You have to think that you have the tools to accomplish it.

Twyla Tharp

#4. When you understand what's involved in winning, as do professional gamblers, you'll tend to bet more during a winning streak and less during a losing streak. However, the average person does exactly the opposite: he or she bets more after a series of losses and less after a series of wins.

Van K. Tharp

#5. What else am I going to do, let the girl sit there on a railing in the moonlight thinking she's damned to go dudeless for the rest of her life?

Tim Tharp

#6. That's what improvising is like for me. There's no tollbooth between my impulse and my action.

Twyla Tharp

#7. I have always felt one of the things dance should do - its business being so clearly physical - is challenge the culture's gender stereotypes.

Twyla Tharp

#8. Never worry that rote exercises aimed at developing skills will suffocate creativity. At the same time, it's important to recognize that demonstrating great technique is not the same as being creative.

Twyla Tharp

#9. You don't get lucky without preparation, and there's no sense in being prepared if you're not open to the possibility of a glorious accident.

Twyla Tharp

#10. Have you ever started to wave at someone and then realized they weren't really waving at you, so you abort and go for a head scratch instead? That's how I felt.

Tim Tharp

#11. You're nothing but a product. And what's this product called? Emptiness, dude, that's what it's called. And for the rest of your life, they sell you over and over, right to the end when they package you one last time and plant you in the ground.

Tim Tharp

#12. Generosity is luck going in the opposite direction, away from you. If you're generous to someone, if you do something to help him out, you are in effect making him lucky. This is important. It's like inviting yourself into a community of good fortune.

Twyla Tharp

#13. 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

#14. Talk about enchantment. Forget about working for something just to have it fall apart on you. Let the magic come. That's what I say. Let the magic come and fill in every inch of that little black crack behind your breastbone.

Tim Tharp

#15. I think that anyone who's pushed to do the very best that they can is privileged. It's a luxury.

Twyla Tharp

#16. In the not-for-profit world, there can be wastefulness because there's not the desperate urgency of when you're on a clock.

Twyla Tharp

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

Twyla Tharp

#18. My job is okay. You know what an okay job is, don't you? It's a job you only hate some of the time instead of all of the time

Tim Tharp

#19. We're toasting the chlorophyll rising in our bodies, catching the energy from the universe. Nobody's ever been young like we are right at this moment.

Tim Tharp

#20. Don't worry about who has the power in the relationship all the time. If you make her happy, then that's the biggest power you can have.

Tim Tharp

#21. There's this expression called postmodernism, which is kind of silly, and destroys a perfectly good word called modern, which now no longer means anything.

Twyla Tharp

#22. Tammaru's office looked like NASA's control room designed by Donald Trump.

K.L. Tharp

#23. I don't believe in that - the husband and wife having to be just alike. I think it's better if they kind of offset each other. Like if they have these different dimensions they can bring to each other.

Tim Tharp

#24. Books seem a little old-fashioned, but hey, I can do old-fashioned if it's good.

Tim Tharp

#25. Everything present is included in the past somewhere; nobody's present pops out of nowhere.

Twyla Tharp

#26. There's nothing wrong with fear; the only mistake is to let it stop you in your tracks.

Twyla Tharp

#27. Work is work; wherever I'm working, I do the best I can. If the actual dollars come from investors as opposed to taxpayers and patrons, what's the difference?

Twyla Tharp

#28. Finally, she's like, I know it looks bad right now, but parents are just people. They don't always know what to do. That doesn't mean they don't love you.

Tim Tharp

#29. That's what the prom is - St. Patrick's Day for the young.

Tim Tharp

#30. I've always felt compelled to explore range, because, as far as I know, we're only here once. So let's see how much we can encompass.

Twyla Tharp

#31. I'm obviously always interested in the dancer who's an athlete and vice versa. I expect dancers to be in condition like an athlete is and to challenge themselves in the same way, to the same physical degree.

Twyla Tharp

#32. 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

#33. I want to swear to the king of the king of the kings it's enough. But this afternoon the magic has all run out.

Tim Tharp

#34. It's very important to work myself physically as hard as I can.

Twyla Tharp

#35. This looks interesting, I say, but what I'm really thinking is, Wow, Aimee, science fiction? Really, could you try any harder to brand yourself with the mark of the nerd herd? What's next, anime?

Tim Tharp

#36. Our whole society's a training ground for addicts.

Tim Tharp

#37. I became my own rebellion. Going with your head makes it arbitrary. Going with your gut means you have no choice. It's inevitable, which is why I have no regrets.

Twyla Tharp

#38. It's vital to establish some rituals-automatic but decisive patterns of behavior-at the beginning of the creative process, when you are most at peril of turning back, chickening out, giving up, or going the wrong way.

Twyla Tharp

#39. If you only do what you know and do it very, very well, chances are that you won't fail. You'll just stagnate, and your work will get less and less interesting, and that's failure by erosion

Twyla Tharp

#40. That's all right,' she says, and I have to wonder how many times she's said that to the people in her life who screwed her over somehow

Tim Tharp

#41. In the future, I will make certain that I commit to projects so there's enough breathing space for me to have an emotional life.

Twyla Tharp

#42. Whenever I feel I'm working in a groove it's invariably because I feel I am being the benefactor in the situation rather than the beneficiary. I am sharing my art with others, lending my craft to theirs, interest-free with no IOU.

Twyla Tharp

#43. Life is about moving, it's about change. And when things stop doing that they're dead.

Twyla Tharp

#44. Skill is how you close the gap between what you can see in your mind's eye and what you can produce; the more skill you have, the more sophisticated and accomplished your ideas can be. With absolute skill comes absolute confidence.

Twyla Tharp

#45. As people who have commitments and obligations, we try to blockade emotions and go on our course towards excellence, and that's a lie. I've definitely paid a price. Everything is an exchange.

Twyla Tharp

#46. I'm a known reader. That's what I do with my time.

Twyla Tharp

#47. Besides, it doesn't matter if it's real. It never does with dreams. They aren't anything anyway but lifesavers to cling to so you don't drown. Life is an ocean, and most everyone's hanging on to some kind of dream to keep afloat.

Tim Tharp

#48. No one is born with skill. It is developed through exercise, through repetition, through a blend of learning and reflection that's both painstaking and rewarding. And it takes time.

Twyla Tharp

#49. See, this is the other side of the coin. This is a girl's downfall. The guy goes soft in the head and starts talking to her like a moron and she wants to take care of him. He's just cuddly fool who can't make it without her.

Tim Tharp

#50. There's more kinds of pain than just physical pain, you know.

Tim Tharp

#51. In terms of individuals who actually inspired me, very few of the academic people that I had access to had that power over me. Maybe it's simply because I wasn't that committed to geometry.

Twyla Tharp

#52. There is a moral dimension, for me, in anything that's any good.

Twyla Tharp

#53. Everyone has a talent. It's simply a question of good discipline, of the good fortune to have an education that meshes with that talent, and a lot of luck.

Twyla Tharp

#54. The way I enjoyed spending time most was dancing. That's from the time I was a very small child, When I was 4 or 5 years old, I remember already having a regime. It was the way I always identified myself.

Twyla Tharp

#55. I learned very early that an audience would relax and look at things differently if they felt they could laugh with you from time to time. There's an energy that comes through the release of tension that is laughter.

Twyla Tharp

#56. I am fairly concise when I work and I work quickly because I think work is done better in a high gear than done our in a gear when everyone's exhausted. Get focused, do it!

Twyla Tharp

#57. 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.

Twyla Tharp

#58. Here in the realm of books she's self-assured. She has some of the control she doesn't have anywhere else.

Tim Tharp

#59. She's still smiling her little smile, and it strikes me that, actually, she is drunk, not on alcohol, but on her St. Louis hopes and dreams. I wouldn't sober her up for anything, but she doesn't need me anymore. She can hang on to her dreams by herself now.

Tim Tharp

#60. A dancer's life is all about repetition.

Twyla Tharp

#61. It's very difficult for me to do fund raising for my own organization if I'm working for other companies because sponsors will say, 'Well, hey, man, if she's doing a ballet for Ballet Theatre, we'll give money to Ballet Theatre.'

Twyla Tharp

#62. She might be the only girl I've ever met who still hasn't learned to sacrifice bodily comfort for fashion's sake.

Tim Tharp

#63. When I started thinking seriously about learning the rules of narrative, I thought, 'You've learned the rules of dancing from the ballet; what's the matter with learning the laws of theater from the people who know how to do it?'

Twyla Tharp

#64. Just remember this- weird's good. Embrace the weird, dude. Enjoy it because it's never going away.

Tim Tharp

#65. No,' I say l. 'It's not all right. But I couldn't help it

Tim Tharp

#66. I'm often asked, 'Where do you get your ideas?' ... It's like asking, 'Where do you find air to breathe?' Ideas are all around you.

Twyla Tharp

#67. If you're speaking of love, you really must include the element of uncertainty - and perhaps it's best approached as the art of constant maintenance.

Twyla Tharp

#68. The ultimate point of a piece for me is that it drives the next one. Does it open new doors? That's the success of a piece.

Twyla Tharp

#69. Whether it's a painter finding his way each morning to the easel, or a medical researcher returning daily to the laboratory, the routine is as much a part of the creative process as the lightning bolt of inspiration, maybe more.

Twyla Tharp

#70. Beauty's all around me right here. It's not in a textbook. It's not in an equation. I mean, take the sunlight ... The colors flow into your lungs, into your bloodstream. You are the colors.

Tim Tharp

#71. Any comic is a tragic soul. Comedy is one of the things that allows one to survive. Particularly if one has been in the process of separating off the emotions, it's one place you can process them.

Twyla Tharp

#72. I can't emphasize this idea enough. Getting involved with your collaborator's problems almost always distracts you from your own. That can be tempting. That can be a relief. But it usually leads to disaster.

Twyla Tharp

#73. She's drenched and bedraggled, but I've never loved anyone as much as I love her right now. That's how I know I'll have to give her up.

Tim Tharp

#74. It was not until I had graduated from college that I made a professional commitment to it. Frankly, I didn't think it wise. I was my own interior parental force, and it's very difficult to justify a profession as a dancer.

Twyla Tharp

#75. Creativity is not just for artists. It's for businesspeople looking for a new way to close a sale; it's for engineers trying to solve a problem; it's for parents who want their children to see the world in more than one way.

Twyla Tharp

#76. It's more like I was daydreaming when the Supreme Being told me what I should do with my life, and it's too late to ask what it was.

Tim Tharp

#77. There's the tradition of the 19th-century ballets, and the 20th century has had a difficult time with that tradition. And it's had a difficult time with many components of the Romantic imagination because of modernism.

Twyla Tharp

#78. When creativity has become your habit; when you've learned to manage time, resources, expectations, and the demands of others; when you understand the value and place of validation, continuity, and purity of purpose, then you're on the way to an artist's ultimate goal; the achievement of mastery.

Twyla Tharp

#79. I walk into a large white room. It's a dance studio in midtown Manhattan. The room is clean, virtually spotless if you don't count the thousands of skid marks and footprints left there by dancers rehearsing. Other than the mirrors, the boom box, the skid marks, and me, the room is empty.

Twyla Tharp

#80. When you're with a girl, it's always best to act like you're an old hand at everything - not to impress her, but just to make sure she feels safe.

Tim Tharp

#81. And that's it - he goes his way, and I go mine. Used to, we would've broken down that whole story about my dad until we found the very truth of the truth of it, but now it's just, So long, I'll see you later.

Tim Tharp

#82. I like to think there's more to a person than just one thing.

Tim Tharp

#83. I'm not interested in seeing dance die. It's not to my advantage. Nor is it to our culture's advantage or anybody else's.

Twyla Tharp

#84. In those long and sleepless nights when I'm unable to shake my fears sufficiently, I borrow a biblical epigraph from Dostoyevsky's The Demons: I see my fears being cast into the bodies of wild boars and hogs, and I watch them rush to a cliff where they fall to their deaths.

Twyla Tharp

#85. You think beauty's in some classroom or some textbook, and it's not. That's not what it's about. This right here. This is beautiful. All of this. That's all you need.

Tim Tharp

#86. To survive, you've got to keep wheedling your way. You can't just sit there and fight against odds when it's not going to work. You have to turn a corner, dig a hole, go through a tunnel - and find a way to keep moving.

Twyla Tharp

#87. I realize that dancers have worked long and hard for standards. However, on occasion, I think that it's good to examine one's heart and ask why are we dancing.

Twyla Tharp

#88. 'Bum's Rush' is a piece about timing, and everything that's in the piece needs to be with the piece. If people are missing, or marking, or unable to use their voices, the impulses that prompt the action are lost, and its logic crumbles.

Twyla Tharp

#89. 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

#90. Just wait. Someone's going to come along, someone you never expected, someone who needs you because you're you.

Tim Tharp

#91. Nobody worked harder than Mozart. By the time he was twenty-eight years old, his hands were deformed because of all the hours he had spent practicing, performing, and gripping a quill pen to compose. That's the missing element in the popular portrait of Mozart.

Twyla Tharp

#92. It's always a problem, getting the curtain in at the end of the first act; having enough of a resolve so that you can bring the curtain in and then opening the show a second time is a little bizarre as a tradition. I've always preferred to go straight through.

Twyla Tharp

#93. Sometimes I have trouble sleeping. It's weird - I can feel exhausted but still, I just lie there wide awake, staring up into the dark with all sorts of ideas bombarding me like dead pelicans

Tim Tharp

#94. There's no room inside for feeling any worse

Tim Tharp

#95. Cassidy brings something beautiful to me from the outside. Aimee brings something beautiful up from the depths of my insides.
"I can't dance like Cassidy," she says.
"Yeah, but you dance like Aimee. And that's perfect.

Tim Tharp

#96. That's how it is with legends. The greater they sound, the more must've got left out.

Tim Tharp

#97. I have the wherewithal to challenge myself for my entire life. That's a great gift.

Twyla Tharp

#98. Nothing lasts," she says, and there's a little crack in her voice. "You think it's going to. You think, 'Here's something I can hold on to,' but it always slips away.

Tim Tharp

#99. The best thing about now, is that there's another one tomorrow.

Tim Tharp

#100. Too much planning implies you've got it all under control. That's boring, unrealistic, and dangerous.

Twyla Tharp