"The most valuable of all talents is that of never using two words when one will do." -- Thomas Jefferson
"The luck of having talent is not enough; one must also have a talent for luck." -- Hector Berlioz
"Use the talents you possess, for the woods would be a very silent place if no birds sang except the best." -- Henry van Dyke
"The person born with a talent they are meant to use will find their greatest happiness in using it." -- Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
"Talent develops in tranquillity, character in the full current of human life." -- Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
"A great deal of talent is lost to the world for want of a little courage." -- Sydney Smith
"Talent is helpful in writing, but guts are absolutely essential." -- Jessamyn West
"If you want to write anything that works, you have to go with the grain of your talent, not against it. If your imagination 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." -- Philip Pullman
"Every human being has hundreds of separate people living under his skin. The talent of a writer is his ability to give them their separate names, identities, personalities and have them relate to other characters living with him." -- Mel Brooks
"The real writer is one who really writes. Talent is an invention like phlogiston after the fact of fire. Work is its own cure. You have to like it better than being loved." -- Marge Piercey
"Talent is cheap. What matters is discipline." -- Andre Dubus
"Any human anywhere will blossom in a hundred unexpected talents and capacities simply by being given the opportunity to do so." -- Doris Lessing
"True education makes for inequality; the inequality of individuality, the inequality of success, the glorious inequality of talent, of genius." -- Felix E. Schelling