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.
Interpretation
Achieving excellence requires a strong commitment that may come at a personal cost.
Twyla Tharp emphasizes that the pursuit of excellence in any endeavor, particularly in one’s craft, demands unwavering dedication and commitment. However, this relentless drive can often lead to personal sacrifices, especially during formative years, where the focus on achieving high standards may overshadow other important aspects of life.
In practice
In a motivational speech to young athletes, this quote can be used to emphasize the importance of dedication in achieving their goals.
Do I watch dancers as people? Yes, absolutely. Do I watch really good dancers for specifically who they are? Absolutely, because how they move best and how they look best is going to be most familiar to them, and not necessarily to me.
I am still pushing the edge of what my body can do.
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.
Without passion, all the skill in the world won't lift you above craft. Without skill, all the passion in the world will leave you eager but floundering. Combining the two is the essence of the creative life.
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.
Without passion, all the skill in the world won't lift you above craft.
If you're doing something new you've got to have a vision. You've got to have a perspective. You've got to have some north star you're aiming for, and you just believe somehow you'll get there, which kind of gets to the passion point.
Failure is an event, never a person; an attitude, not an outcome; a temporary inconvenience; a stepping stone. Our response to it determines just how helpful it can be.
The goal is to make practice more difficult, physically/mentally, than anything your players will face during a game.
Just write. If you have to make a choice, if you say, 'Oh well, I'm going to put the writing away until my children are grown,' then you don't really want to be a writer. If you want to be a writer, you do your writing... If you don't do it, you probably don't want to be a writer, you just want to have written and be famous—which is very different.
As we speak cruel time is fleeing. Seize the day, believing as little as possible in tomorrow.
You don't need to have a 100-person company to develop that idea.
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