When you're in a rut, you have to question everything except your ability to get out of it.
Interpretation
In difficult times, trust in your capacity to overcome challenges while questioning other aspects of your situation.
This quote by Twyla Tharp emphasizes the importance of self-belief during challenging periods when one feels stuck or in a 'rut'. It suggests that while it's essential to critically assess one's circumstances and options, the one thing you should not doubt is your own ability to rise above the difficulties and find a way forward.
In practice
In a motivational speech about resilience and personal growth.
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.
Your voice can change the world.
The world bursts at the seams with people ready to tell you you're not good enough. On occasion, some may be correct. But do not do their work for them. Seek any job; ask anyone out; pursue any goal. Don't take it personally when they say 'no' - they may not be smart enough to say 'yes.'
So long as readers keep reading and my publishers keep publishing, I plan to keep on writing. I'd have to be an idiot to be burnt-out in this job.
My motto is very personal and may not fit anyone else or any other company. It is: Don't do anything that someone else can do. Don't undertake a project unless it is manifestly important and nearly impossible.
Just as nature takes every obstacle, every impediment, and works around it--turns it to its purposes, incorporates it into itself, so, too, a rational being can turn each setback into raw material and use it to achieve its goal.
It doesn't matter who you are. It can happen to anybody. We have Kenyan, Dominican Republic and even Scandinavian Olympic gold medalists. All you need is will power.
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