The body says what words cannot.
Martha GrahamRead
All things I do are in every woman. Every woman is Medea. Every woman is Jocasta. There comes a time when a woman is a mother to her husband. Clytemnestra is every woman when she kills.
Interpretation
This quote highlights the complexity of women's roles and emotions through mythological figures.
Martha Graham uses the references to powerful female characters from Greek mythology to illustrate that the essence of women encompasses a wide range of experiences and emotions. Each mentioned figure embodies different aspects and struggles a woman might face, suggesting that all women share common traits of strength, maternal instincts, and the potential for both nurturing and vengeance.
In practice
In a speech about women's empowerment, one might refer to this quote to illustrate the strength and diversity of women's experiences.
The body says what words cannot.
Nobody cares if you can't dance well.
Movement never lies. It is a barometer telling the state of the soul's weather to all who can read it.
What people in the world think of you is really none of your business.
No artist is pleased. There is no satisfaction whatever at any time. There is only a strange, divine dissatisfaction, a blessed unrest that keeps us marching and makes us more alive than the others.
The body is your instrument in dance, but your art is outside that creature, the body.
I don't want to have a relationship with someone if I'm not going to work with them.
At the core of all anger is a need that is not being fulfilled.
A married woman has the same natural right to acquire and hold property, and to make all contracts that she is mentally competent to make reasonably, as has a married man, or any other man.
Why do we, then, continue to treat women as if their emotions and comfort, and the postures they might want to assume while in labor, are against the rules?
I want to talk to him. I want to ask him about that girl and if he loved her and still misses her. Nothing, however, exits my mouth. How well do we really let ourselves know each other? There's a long quietness until I finally break it open. It reminds me of someone breaking bread and handing it out. In my case, I hand out a question to my friend.
There were times Ruma felt closer to her mother in death than she had in life, an intimacy born simply of thinking of her so often, of missing her. But she knew that this was an illusion, a mirage, and that the distance between them was now infinite, unyielding.
Subscribe for the occasional hand-picked quote. No noise.