Quotes About Talent

Abstract art filled the walls, lined the bookshelves. But all painted with the same crude hand, no eye to detail or form. Savagely mixed, the colors selected to hurt the eye. Jackson Pollock without the pictures. They were ugliness disguising themselves as talent.

even Mozart, who was a musical prodigy at age four, took 13 more years before he began to produce world-class music. The

As a human being, he might not have been lovable—or even likable—but as a performer, he possessed unsurpassed talents that he honed through a lifetime of practice. On Sunday afternoons, he shared his gifts with millions, enabling them to forget reality and vicariously experience thrills that were more exhilarating than anything felt in a church pew.

When I was eight years old, I got a dummy for Christmas and started teaching myself. I got books and records and sat in front of the bathroom mirror, practising. I did my first show in the third grade and just kept going there was no reason to quit.

I really wanted to be a newspaper cartoonist, but nobody liked my work. I didn't have the control or flair that was necessary to create something that didn't look childish.

College? Who needed college. Kobe Bryant had decided to take his talents to the NBA.

Regardless, the growing chorus of Laker fans who wanted more Kobe and less Eddie was confounding, because the third-year guard was playing the best ball of his lifetime. But Bryant was on the verge of legitimate greatness—a greatness that Jones (talent be damned) would never touch.

When I see a good singer, I get teary-eyed. Part of it is jealousy because all comedians are frustrated rock stars. That's a fact.

Don't undervalue things that come easy. Sometimes they're the things that would be the hardest for someone else to do and often they are the things that would be almost impossible to do when you try too hard.

You can't quit because there's a Beyoncé in the world. You can't quit because you went to see the Chicago Symphony Orchestra and realized that everyone on stage knows more about music than you ever will.

It can be very daunting and upsetting when people realize that others are more talented than they are. But you have to work through that. You can't quit because there's a Beyoncé in the world.

Observation had always meant more to me than interaction...My sole gift or talent, I believe now, was that places could impress themselves upon me, and I could become part of them with ease.

How discouraging to watch your friends enjoying something you are too afraid to try. Do not underestimate such discouragement. It can be just as present in adulthood as you see friends taking on careers, travel, moves, and relationships that you would fear. Yet deep inside you also know you have the same or more talent, desire, and potential.

if somebody doesn't have any talent, get off the stage! you're wasting my time.

And then there was Ray Charles.

They had learned a lot in those lean times. Brilliant, gifted students, both of them, cosseted and given awards and appreciated; it had come as a rude shock. It had taught them to woo audiences, to ignore their surroundings, to welcome their listeners, however few; and to please them.

There is a lot of satisfaction, a lot of joy, that can come from doing something you love and that you're good at

Genetic randomness had already determined how much talent I'd been allotted, and destiny's randomness would account for my share of luck. The only piece I had any control over was my discipline. Recognizing that, it seemed like the best plan would be to work my ass off. That was the only card I had to play, so I played it hard.

Ah, lovely adolescence—when the "talented" are officially shunted off from the herd, thus putting the total burden of society's creative dreams on the thin shoulders of a few select souls, while condemning everyone else to live a more commonplace, inspiration-free existence! What a system . . . )

The guardians of high culture will try to convince you that the arts belong only to a chosen few, but they are wrong and they are also annoying. We

Pure creativity is something better than a necessity; it's a gift. It's the frosting.

Which is to say, the Romans didn't believe that an exceptionally gifted person was a genius; they believed that an exceptionally gifted person had a genius.

The guardians of high culture will try to convince you that the arts belong only to a chosen few, but they are wrong and they are also annoying. We are all the chosen few. We are all makers by design.

Ó, édes serdülÅ'kor – amikor a "tehetségeseket" hivatalosan is elkülönítik a hordától, hogy ily módon a néhány kiválasztott lélek gyenge vállaira helyezzék az egész társadalom kreativitással kapcsolatos ábrándjainak terhét, miközben mindenki mást egy sokkal hétköznapibb, inspirációmentes létezésre kárhoztatnak.