talent
I don’t believe in this “gifted few” concept, just in people doing things they are really interested in doing. They have a way of getting good at whatever it is.
100 Quotes by Charles Eames, ed. by Carla Hartman and Eames Demetrios (Eames Office, 2007).
His talent was as natural as the pattern that was made by the dust on a butterfly’s wings.
Describing F. Scott Fitzgerald in A Moveable Feast (New York: Scribner, 2009), restored edition, 125.
Without faith, talent is a fugitive thing.
Reading My Father (New York: Scribner, 2011), 81.
Talent is insignificant. I know a lot of talented ruins. Beyond talent lie all the usual words: discipline, love, luck, but, most of all, endurance.
The Paris Review Interviews, vol. II (New York: Picador, 2007), 266.
Talent must be a fanatical mistress. She’s beautiful; when you’re with her, people watch you, they notice. But she bangs on your door at odd hours, and she disappears for long stretches, and she has no patience for the rest of your existence: your wife, your children, your friends. She is the most thrilling evening of your week, but some day she will leave you for good. One night, after she’s been gone for years, you will see her on the arms of a younger man, and she will pretend not to recognize you.
City of Thieves (New York: Penguin, 2008), 162.