Quotes About Talent

Women are ruling in every sector, so why not in music?

I have huge respect for women who go out of their homes and have the courage to make their own destiny. And let me tell you, Indian women are doing a great job. There are those who work because they have no option but to earn, and then there are those who do it because they have the right talent. I respect both.

Women are very different to men, and that hasn't been respected. So when people say there's never been a good woman painter or poet or engineer or whatever, they don't understand that our skills are many simultaneously and men's skills are single.

Women are a key part of the sound of the groups that accompany male singers like Kirk Franklin, Israel Houghton, and myself.

Investments in women are positively correlated to growth, prosperity, stability, democracy, health - and vital to our national security. We cannot write off the talent of half the world and expect to confront our challenges.

Women are hilarious.

I can't read music. Instead, I'd do stuff inside the piano, do harmonics and all kinds of crazy things. They used to put me in these annual piano contests down at Long Beach City College, and two years in a row, I won first prize - out of like 5,000 kids! The judges were like, 'Very interesting interpretation!' I thought I was playing it right.

I started out in the Apollo Theater. That's where I got my start. I won Amateur Night four weeks in a row.

If a man has talent and can't use it, he's failed. If he uses only half of it, he has partly failed. If he uses the whole of it, he has succeeded, and won a satisfaction and triumph few men ever know.

I've won several Emmys, a Tony and a Grammy, so maybe somebody will let me have an Oscar, and then I'll have a full set.

My earliest memory of dancing is that I won a dance contest in Jamaica when I was 6.

If I'd gone into taekwondo, I'd probably have won several Olympic medals.

Our first gig was a battle of the bands. We did 45 minutes of comedy and never played a note - and we won!

Success happened little by little for me. I tasted the flavor of fame in small doses: I started at 10 years old when I won a music contest; I was performing at birthday parties, company meetings.

My family was musical on both sides. My father's family had a famous flautist and a classical pianist. My mother won a contest to be Shirley Temple's double - she was the diva of the family. At 8, I learned how to play guitar. I used to play songs from the '20s, '30s and '40s in the kitchen for my grandmother.

If Roger stopped right now and never won another match, to me he'd already be one of the greatest players to ever play the game. To me, he's the greatest all around talent that I've ever seen.

As I was growing up, I did a lot of talent shows. I won fifteen Sunday nights straight in a series of talent shows in Macon. I showed up the sixteenth night, and they wouldn't let me go on any more. Whatever success I had was through the help of the good Lord.

I have won many awards for my singing, and I have sung in 8 languages.

I won an Academy Award for 'The Cider House Rules,' playing an American.

To join or not to join films was the biggest choice I had to make. I'd done two years of biogenetic engineering, was an economics graduate and a gold medalist. I had also been a Bharatanatyam dancer from age five, always won the best actress award in school. Finally, I decided to do things for my soul, chose to act.

'True Grit' was fun to do, but I wasn't cut out to be an actor. I made John Wayne look so good, he won his only Oscar.

When I was ten, I won the horseshoe-throwing contest at summer camp. I was also the Wiffle ball champion in my town.

I can't read music. Instead, I'd do stuff inside the piano, do harmonics and all kinds of crazy things. They used to put me in these annual piano contests down at Long Beach City College, and two years in a row, I won first prize - out of like 5,000 kids!

If the Ballon d'Or was fair, Xavi would have won five or six. He deserves all the respect in the world.