Quotes About Talent

Along the way [Mozart] got married; fathered seven children (two of whom survived into adulthood); performed as a pianist; violinist; and conductor; maintained a successful teaching studio; wrote thousands of letters; traveled widely; attended the theater religiously; played cards, billiards, and bocce; and rode horseback for exercise. Not bad for someone portrayed as a giggling idiot in the movies.

For there is an upstart crow, beautified with our feathers, that with his tiger's heart wrapped in a player's hide, supposes he is as well able to bumbast out a blank verse as the best of you; and being an absolute Johannes fac totum, is in his own conceit the only Shake-scene in a country.

Hard work without talent is a shame, but talent without hard work is a tragedy

There is something that is much more scarce, something rarer than ability. It is the ability to recognize ability.

Genius is not a possession of the limited few, but exists in some degree in everyone. Where there is natural growth, a full and free play of faculties, genius will manifest itself.

I have no sympathy with the belief that art is the restricted province of those who paint, sculpt, make music and verse. I hope we will come to an understanding that the material used is only incidental, that there is artist in every man; and that to him the possibility of development and of expression and the happiness of creation is as much a right and as much a duty to himself, as to any of those who work in the especially ticketed ways.

The greater the artist, the greater the doubt. Perfect confidence is granted to the less talented as a consolation prize." [ Modernism's Patriarch ( Time Magazine , June 10, 1996)]

The greater the artist, the greater the doubt.

talented employees who put their needs ahead of their colleagues and the company are dangerous.

And the most talented people in every occupation have huge advantages over their ordinary peers. Dean Keith Simonton, who studies greatness and genius, finds that whether it comes to songwriters, composers, scientists, programmers, or filmmakers, the top 10 percent generate as much or more output than the other 90 percent.

Nolan Bushnell, the founder and former CEO of the Atari Corporation, remarks that "sometimes the best engineers come in bodies that can't talk

In fact, selling—rather than creating—inventions may have been Thomas Edison's greatest talent. Many of the famous inventions from his laboratory were imagined and developed by his staff, not Edison. His assistant, Francis Jehl, lamented that Edison was a more skilled pitchman than inventor, that his "genius" was most reminiscent of master huckster and showman P. T. Barnum.

Leslie Howard.' 'Howard – yes, I remember him in The Scarlet Pimpernel. He was very good.

You see, I believe that you cannot be taught to 'write.' You can be taught grammar and punctuation, but you cannot be taught to be a writer. That has to come from within.

For the person with creative potential there is no wholeness except in using it.

do to make my setting the most fertile ground in the world for the growth of talent?

All things being equal, energizers also win out in the internal labor market by attracting other high performers.

A genius temperament should be handled with care.

The material of literary talent is words; the material of story talent is life itself.

When talented people write badly it's generally for one of two reasons: Either they're blinded by an idea they feel compelled to prove or they're driven by an emotion they must express.

No one needs yet another recipe book on how to reheat Hollywood leftovers. We need a rediscovery of the underlying tenets of our art, the guiding principles that liberate talent. No matter where a film is made—Hollywood, Paris, Hong Kong—if it's of archetypal quality, it triggers a global and perpetual chain reaction of pleasure that carries it from cinema to cinema, generation to generation.

Only by using everything and anything you know about the craft of storytelling can you make your talent forge story. For talent without craft is like fuel without an engine. It burns wildly but accomplishes nothing.

Do research. Feed your talent. Research not only wins the war on cliche, it's the key to victory over fear and it's cousin, depression.

No matter our talent, we all know in the midnight of our souls that 90 percent of what we do is less than our best.