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"The formal education that I received made little sense to me."
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"They spent the first three years of school getting you to pretend stuff and then the rest of it marking you down if you did the same thing."

"This is what a real teacher does: she opens the gates of our minds to the possibilities of the soul."

"Frivolity is inborn, conceit acquired by education."

"Since we cannot know all there is to be known about anything, we ought to know a little about everything."

"If I show up at your house ten years from now and find nothing in your living room but The Readers Digest, nothing on your bedroom night table but the newest Dan Brown novel, and nothing in your bathroom but Jokes for the John, I'll chase you down to the end of your driveway and back, screaming 'Where are your books? You graduated college ten years ago, so how come there are no damn books in your house? Why are you living on the intellectual equivalent of Kraft Macaroni and Cheese?"

"It's hard for me to believe that people who read very little (or not at all in some cases) should presume to write and expect people to like what they have written."

"Everything has changed. . . except the way we think. The aim [of education] must be the training of independently acting and thinking individuals, who, however, see in the service of community their highest life problems."
Explore more quotes by Twyla Tharp


"With each piece I've completed I have worked to make it intact, and each of them has been an equal high. It's like children. A mother refuses to pick out one as a favorite, and I can't do any better with the dances."


"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."


"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."


"I would have to challenge the term, modern dance. I don't really use that term in relation to my work. I simply think of it as dancing. I think of it as moving."


"I often say that in making dances I can make a world where I think things are done morally, done democratically, done honestly."


"The necessity to constantly turn in an excellent performance, to be absolutely wedded to this dedication and this ideal means that as a child you're going to pay for it personally."


"My mother was a dominant force in my life. She had a very specific idea about education, which was: you should know everything about everything. It was quite simple. There was no exclusivity, and there really was no judgment."


"I have not wanted to intimidate audiences. I have not wanted my dancing to be an elitist form. That doesn't mean I haven't wanted it to be excellent."


"I was privileged to be able to study a year with Martha Graham, the last year she was teaching."
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