"Talent was not rare; the ability to survive having it was."

--

Neal Stephenson

#Talent Quotes #Ability Quotes

“When there happens to be a weapon of mass destruction suspect site in an area that we occupy and if people have time, they'll look at it.”
“Stuffed deer heads on walls are bad enough, but itâ€™s worse when you see them wearing dark glasses, having streamers around their necks and a hat on their antlers. Because then you know they were enjoying themselves at a party when they were shot.”
“I appreciate a slow-burn romance. In most movies, everyone is just tearing their clothes off in the first scene.”
“The system - the American one, at least - is a vast and noble experiment. It has been polestar and exemplar for other nations. But from kindergarten until she graduates from college the girl is treated in it exactly like her brothers. She studies the same subjects, becomes proficient at the same sports. Oh, it is a magnificent lore she learns, education for the mind beyond anything Jane Austen or Saint Theresa or even Mrs. Pankhurst ever dreamed. It is truly Utopian. But Utopia was never meant to exist on this disheveled planet.”
“Paint records the most delicate gesture and the most tense. It tells whether the painter sat or stood or crouched in front of the canvas. Paint is a cast made of the painter's movements, a portrait of the painter's body and thoughts.”

Source : James Elkins (2004). “What Painting Is”, p.5, Routledge
“I know how to turn the bad into good always.”
“I might have played a little bit more in Europe than I have in Japan.”
“All existing things are really one. We regard those that are beautiful and rare as valuable, and those that are ugly as foul and rotten. The foul and rotten may come to be transformed into what is rare and valuable, and the rare and valuable into what is foul and rotten.”

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