"Demonstration of individual talent involves originality and it is easy to destroy natural talent."

“I think that when you're writing fiction what you're doing is reflecting life as you see it, and putting down how you think and how other people think, and the sort of confusions that you don't normally like to admit to.”

“Enthusiasm means everything. Not just a little. Everything. If you are involved in some kind of project right now, or launching any personal endeavor, your enthusiasm (or lack of it) will directly determine how successful this undertaking will be. If you are not excited at the core of your being by it, drop it right now. If you are excited at the core of your being, demonstrate that in everything you think and say and do.”

“I was so self -conscious, every time football players went into a huddle, I thought they were talking about me.”

“Society became my glittering bride, And airy hopes my children.”

“New York City revived around the team. I don't think you can look at the recovery of New York from the 1970s without, on some level, talking about Steinbrenner. Even if you're just talking about the feel of the city, he was part of a creation of a new sense of optimism.”

“Savant syndrome is not a disorder in the same way as autism is a disorder or dementia is a disorder. Savant syndrome are some conditions that are superimposed and grafted on to some underlying disability. So savant syndrome is not a disease or disorder in and of itself. It is a collection of characteristics, or symptoms, or behaviors that have grafted on to the underlying disability.”

Source : "Conversations on Creativity with Darold Treffert, Part I: De". Interview with Scott Barry Kaufman, www.psychologytoday.com. April 11, 2011.

“One can go back toward safety or forward toward growth.”

“When we become aware that we do not have to escape our pains, but that we can mobilize them into a common search for life, those very pains are transformed from expressions of despair into signs of hope.”