Daily Inspiration Quote by Twyla Tharp

Tharp’s candor lands like a small heresy in a culture that loves the “called since childhood” artist narrative. She admits delay, doubt, and calculation: the decision to dance professionally isn’t framed as destiny, but as a risk assessment. The line “Frankly, I didn’t think it wise” is doing double duty. It’s a personal confession, but it’s also a quiet indictment of how the arts are socially coded as impractical, indulgent, even irresponsible - especially for someone raised to be sensible.

The most revealing phrase is “my own interior parental force.” Tharp isn’t fighting an external villain, the disapproving parent or skeptical teacher. She’s internalized the voice of authority so thoroughly that it becomes self-policing. That’s the subtext: talent isn’t the only hurdle; respectability is. Her “parental force” stands in for class anxieties, economic reality, and a broader American moral about work needing to look like work. Dance, ephemeral and bodily, resists the usual proof points of seriousness.

The final clause - “very difficult to justify a profession as a dancer” - is less self-pity than a blunt map of the terrain she had to cross. “Justify” implies a courtroom: evidence, arguments, permission. Tharp is pointing to the extra labor artists perform before they ever step into the studio: translating devotion into something legible to a world that measures worth in stability, credentials, and predictable paychecks. Her commitment, arriving post-college, reads as a strategic leap made with eyes open, not a romantic plunge.