Twyla Tharp

“The only thing I fear more than change is no change. The business of being static makes me nuts.”

“Judgment is not my business. Existing is my business.”

“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.”

“The formal education that I received made little sense to me.”

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

“My mother was the first woman in the county in Indiana where we were born, in Jay County, to have a college degree. She was educated as a pianist and she wanted to concertize, but when the war came she was married, had a family, so she started teaching.”

“I thought I had to make an impact on history. I had to become the greatest choreographer of my time. That was my mission. Posterity deals with us however it sees fit. But I gave it 20 years of my best shot.”

“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.”