“There is a vitality, a life force, an energy, a quickening that is translated through you into action and because there is only one of you in all of time this expression is unique. And if you block it, it will never exist through any other medium and it will be lost. It is not your business to determine how good it is, nor how valuable, nor how it compares with other expressions. It is your business to keep it yours, clearly and directly, to keep the channel open.”

– A passage summing up Martha Graham’s advice to self-doubting artists as quoted in Agnes de Mille, Dance to the Piper (Little, Brown, 1952) from Dear Genius: The Letters of Ursula Nordstrom by Ursula Nordstrom, edited by Leonard S. Marcus, illustrated by Maurice Sendak.