I've always found it necessity to strip away everything but the most fundamental ways to work - the rest is style.

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 feel I can handle the architecture of dance as well as anybody.

I've always thought my creative life began the moment my mother called me Twyla.

It's vital to establish some rituals-automatic but decisive patterns of behavior-at the beginning of the creative process, when you are most at peril of turning back, chickening out, giving up, or going the wrong way.

Creativity is a habit, and the best creativity is a result of good work habits.

I had received my first establishment grants in response to applications filed the year before. To the pages of baffling forms I had simply attached a handwritten note saying, 'I make dances, not applications. Send the money. Love, Twyla.