Quotes About Talent

Talent is to actors what luck is to card players. Its not really anything; its just a fictitious word that people have created and labeled things. Talent is like, you know, I never really believed in talent, I believed in drive and determination and preparation, but talent is sort of like luck.

In the contest between talent and hard work as to which is the more important element of success, there's no comparison. A mediocre talent with lots of hard work will go further than a stellar talent who coasts.

Energy plus talent and you are a king, energy and no talent and you are still a prince, talent and no energy and you are a pauper

Talent warms-up the given (as they say in cookery) and makes it apparent; genius brings something new. But our time lets talent pass for genius. They want to abolish the genius, deify the genius, and let talent forge ahead.

The most successful people start with dominant talent—and then add skills, knowledge, and practice to the mix. When they do this, the raw talent actually serves as a multiplier.

Everybody has a talent, but its what you do with that talent to make it great.

Pleasant things to hear, though hearing them from him embarrasses me. I soak up the praise but feel obliged to disparage the gift. I believe that most people have some degree of talent for something--forms, colors, words, sounds. Talent lies around in us like kindling waiting for a match, but some people, just as gifted as others, are less lucky. Fate never drops a match on them. The times are wrong, or their health is poor, or their energy low, or their obligations too many. Something.

The general unreliability of all information presents a special problem in war: all action takes place, so to speak, in the twilight, which, like fog or moonlight, often tends to make things seem grotesque and larger than they really are. Whatever is hidden from full view in this feeble light has to be guessed at by talent, or simply left to chance. So once again for the lack of objective knowledge, one has to trust to talent or to luck.

My advice for anyone who wants to follow in my footsteps: create your own path, hone your talent, be ready to show your talent, and don't doubt yourself.

I started painting as a hobby when I was little. I didn't know I had any talent. I believe talent is just a pursued interest. Anybody can do what I do.

Some people seem to have extreme natural wiring - a talent that seems to come out of nowhere. Like a music savant or prodigy. The uplifting news, though, is that many talented people don't have such natural wiring - but they forge a talent through thousands of hours of what's known as deliberate practice or deliberate performance.

I have to say: We were looking at all of Native American actors, who mostly all work under one casting director. And there's so much talent to be cast. There really is. We saw some really good readings. There's more talent to be had there.

We are told that talent creates opportunity, yet it is desire that creates talent.

A man is the prisoner of his power. A topical memory makes him an almanac; a talent for debate, disputant; skill to get money makes him a miser, that is, a beggar. Culture reduces these inflammations by invoking the aid of other powers against the dominant talent, and by appealing to the rank of powers. It watches success.

I usually say I might have a talent or I'm lacking a talent, because everyday, I must tell you, I thank whatever is up there or out there that I'm alive and that I get to do what I'm doing, and I think that sends off a lot of good vibrations in different directions.

Generally speaking, investing in yourself is the best thing you can do. Anything that improves your own talents; nobody can tax it or take it away from you. They can run up huge deficits and the dollar can become worth far less. You can have all kinds of things happen. But if you’ve got talent yourself, and you’ve maximized your talent, you’ve got a tremendous asset that can return ten-fold.

I can ask someone to let me into all aspects of their life for several years, but people have got to have that gift: that courage and that talent for opening their lives to the camera. Being candid is a gift, and that's what the audience responds to. Part of it is me asking, and part of it is just their inherent talent, which is what you are looking for when you make documentaries - people that are really going to let you in on what they are going through.

Everyone has a purpose in life... a unique gift or special talent to give to others. And when we blend this unique talent with service to others, we experience the ecstasy and exultation of our own spirit, which is the ultimate goal of all goals.

If you want to write anything that works, you have to go with the grain of your talent, not against it. If your talent is inert and sullen in the face of business or politics...but takes fire at the thought of ghosts and vampires and witches and demons then feed the flames, feed the flames.

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.

So much talent comes from the base of poverty and those in the margins. You limit the base, you miss too much talent.

A lot of people have a lot of talent. What people don't have is the will to work hard enough to develop that talent fully.

Talent is able to achieve what is beyond other people's capacity to achieve, yet not what is beyond their capacity of apprehension; therefore it at once finds its appreciators. The achievement of genius, on the other hand, transcends not only others' capacity of achievement, but also their capacity of apprehension; therefore they do not become immediately aware of it. Talent is like the marksman who hits a target which others cannot reach; genius is like the marksman who hits a target, as far as which others cannot even see.

Casanova, he had no money and no power, and according to some, he even was cute. But he had talent to live, and some literature talent. I love how he invented himself.

I wasn't good enough. I had a little talent but not enough. There is nothing more discouraging than having just a little talent.

Don’t waste talent. No matter what you do, don’t waste talent.

Every orchestra I know, every opera house I know, is desperately looking around trying to find new talent, new composing talent, supporting young composers, supporting new ideas, supporting new ways of getting the message across.

Not every child has an equal talent or an equal ability or equal motivation, but they should have the equal right to develop their talent and their ability and their motivation, to make something of themselves.

Create your own path, hone your talent, be ready to show your talent, and don't doubt yourself.

It is hard to compare over generations. I think a lot of the top talent is choosing other fields. We look pretty hard - we put a lot of time and effort into finding talent.

Outsiders always look for a reason to explain why they are not inside. They never look in the mirror. Let's face it, the profession I'm in is a very simple and a very cruel one. There is no way that you can create a career for someone without talent and no way to stop a career of someone with talent.

Creative thinking is not a talent, it is a skill that can be learned. It empowers people by adding strength to their natural abilities which improves teamwork, productivity and, where appropriate, profits.

Writing is grunt work - you need to have self-motivation, perseverance, and faith... talent is the smallest part of it.

Talent consists not in inventing shapes but in causing those that were invisible to emerge.

It is possible to be a fan of reality TV, talent shows and bubblegum pop and still have a brain. You will also see that a great many people know perfectly well how silly and camp and trivial their fandom is. They do not check in their minds when they enter a fan site. Judgement is not necessarily fled to brutish beasts, and men have not quite lost their reason. Which is all a way of questioning whether pop-culture hero worship is really so psychically damaging, so erosive of cognitive faculties, so corrupting of the soul of mankind as we are so often told.

Keep your character several steps ahead of your talent

If the girls and boys have talent and feel like working on themselves, they can become champions.

It would seem that the more irresponsible and crafty one is, the more likely one is to have a talent for storytelling.

It's very hard to become an actor in film and television, you have to have such perseverance and you have to really believe that if you have any sort of talent at all, you will find work one day.

If you are ambitious you can have a moment of glory but it will most likely be temporary. But talent always finds its way out.

I've known people with exceptional talent - and some have wasted it. Ambition spurs a man on.

I do not want to die... until I have faithfully made the most of my talent and cultivated the seed that was placed in me, until the last small twig has grown.

Perhaps five or even ten per cent of men can do something rather well. It is a tiny minority who can do anything really well, and the number of men who can do two things well is negligible. If a man has any genuine talent, he should be ready to make almost any sacrifice in order to cultivate it to the full.

I wish more people would take the extraordinary talent they have and just let their id go because that's what we discovered. We discovered that the sillier we got, the more people believed that we were speaking from our hearts.

Where a beast would have claws, I was born with talent

When I was sixteen or seventeen, I wanted to be a writer. I wanted to be a playwright. But everything I wrote, I thought, was weak. And I can remember falling asleep in tears because I had no talent the way I wanted to have.

The rest of the story from Acts 1:8 explains that Christ-followers have a mission while here on earth. They are to be Christ’s witnesses all over this planet. It’s as if Christ said, “Think you’re missing the book smarts, the street smarts, the looks, the talent, or the speaking ability to accomplish this mission? Don’t be concerned with those things, because you have my mountain-moving, life-transforming, death-defying power on your side.”

I was young and so eager to make some money as well as get exposed and show my talent.