Quotes About Talent

People are surprised I do comedy! And I'm like, 'Guys, that's all I have been doing. For, like, forever.'

Messi no longer surprises me.

It never surprises me how good Shaun is. Even the coaches are surprised by the things he does and I can understand why. He can strike the ball so hard, yet his legs are only about 12 inches long. But I've been watching him do things like that ever since we were kids. I know what he's capable of.

It's not so surprising that there are more women in metal bands. And they're not just fronting them. There are drummers and guitar players, bass players.

I know it might be surprising to some, but anyone who knows me - especially those who shared a changing room with me in my playing days who first told me I could sing - will tell you what a big fan I am of big band music.

From being a writer of plays, it was not that surprising that somebody thought of giving me a job as an actor. After I played one part, others came along.

Drogba is certainly one of the best strikers in the world and has gone to Galatasaray after his experience in China, with the desire to keep surprising.

Mesut is a player that always keeps giving his best and is always surprising everyone and he's a player that we're very grateful and very lucky to have.

I'm a surprisingly good rapper.

Surprisingly, I am great at kiteboarding, but I'm not great at surfing.

It feels overwhelming to be recognised for 'Pink.' Surprisingly, all the frustration, angst of not being recognised for my talent and work all these years has disappeared overnight, and I am left only with gratitude.

I surrender to my directors. I do that because I respect them immensely. In fact, a director's talent scares me. I admit that they're more intelligent than me, and I submit to that, as an assistant director does. Even when I have suggestions to make, I don't state them strongly.

Meryl Streep doesn't care how she looks. She just surrenders to the truth of the character. Not everybody has the ability to do that. They look good and they can pretend to be that person, it's not the same as being that person. And there are not many actors who will surrender to that.

It's akin to style, what I'm talking about, but it isn't style alone. It is the writer's particular and unmistakable signature on everything he writes. It is his world and no other. This is one of the things that distinguishes one writer from another. Not talent. There's plenty of that around. But a writer who has some special way of looking at things and who gives artistic expression to that way of looking: that writer may be around for a time.

La chose dont je parle ici a une parenté avec le style, mais ne se ramène pas au seul style. C'est la griffe particulière et reconnaissable entre toutes qu'un écrivain appose à tout ce qu'il écrit. Ce n'est pas le talent. Le talent, ça court les rues. Mais un écrivain qui a une façon spéciale de voir les choses et qui donne une forme artistique à cette manière de voir est un écrivain qui a des chances de durer.

When it's good it comes easy. Anything you have read or heard to the contrary is a lot of mishmash.

You valorize intelligence because that's your most valued personal characteristic, just like the model feels about her beauty and the football player about his talent for using his body weight to mow down other human bodies.

Genius in a person was like weed that takes over the entire garden, that won't allow anything else to grow. (p. 251)

Writers are solitaries by vocation and necessity. I sometimes think the test is not so much talent, which is not as rare as people think, but purpose or vocation, which manifests in part as the ability to endure a lot of solitude and keep working. Before writers are writers they are readers, living in books, through books, in the lives of others that are also the heads of others, in that act that is so intimate and yet so alone.

Writers are solitaries by vocation and necessity. I sometimes think the test is not so much talent, which is not as rare as people think, but purpose or vocation, which manifests in part as the ability to endure a lot of solitude and keep working. Before writers are writers they are readers, living books, through books, in the lives of others that are also the head of others, in that act that is so intimate and yet so alone.

Even so, at times stress is inevitable, and seven-day-week-style activities, such as golf before a conference call, or a break on the beach between inventories, help reduce it to reasonable levels. Executives who are embarrassed to take these breaks or companies that frown on them are shortsighted. Stress is a major disruption; and its effects, such as burnout, are grim reapers for talented people.

What you are essentially advocating at Semco is harnessing the wisdom of people," a friend once told me. "Their reservoir of talent, the natural wisdom of the system, the wisdom that only comes from freedom, the wisdom that emerges however unevenly from democracy. Wisdom is what you get by asking why…." I wish I had said that first, but I didn't so I'll second it.

We resort to a series of programs and practices like job rotation, reverse evaluation, and self-management. They're intended to help people tap their reservoir of talent and to preclude the need for weeding out. We never assume there are weeds among us.

You're on, Ted," I told him. "Your big chance, boy. Don't blow it. Folks, this kid is going to dance his balls off before your very eyes.