Twyla Tharp

Walt Disney was a master of the human psychology. His sense of timing, sense of speed. In a sense, those cartoons are like Rorschach tests.

When I was a kid, the avant-garde to me was boring because it was just the flip side of being really successful.

What is music about? You can't listen to one era, one composer, and know what music is about.

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.

There is obviously a power and a truth in action that doesn't lie, which words easily can do.

Playwrights have texts, composers have scores, painters and sculptors have the residue of those activities, and dance is traditionally an ephemeral, effervescent, here-today-gone-tomorrow kind of thing.

Desire is the first thing a modern dancer should have. Skill can be developed. But if you don't have desire as a modern dancer, forget it.

Optimism with some experience behind it is much more energizing than plain old experience with a certain degree of cynicism.

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.

Broadway has some very tight expectations as to what a show is.

Dance has never been a particularly easy life, and everybody knows that.

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

At the ballet classes I took when I first came to New York, I would see great dancers like Cynthia Gregory and Lupe Serrano. I would look at them and study what they could do, and what I couldn't do. And then I'd think maybe they should try what I could do.

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.

It is extremely arrogant and very foolish to think that you can ever outwit your audience.

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.

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

I'm not satisfied sitting in just the world of abstract work.

We don't need to illustrate music; music illustrates itself.

I grew up in a drive-in theater, from the time I was 8, working in a snack bar watching four features every week. It was silent theater in the sense that this was a drive-in, which meant that I often saw the films going with no sound. But I learned to tell stories through action.