As I have said before, I had no illusions about my performing ability. But I did not know that my despair was brought about not because I had no talent but because I did not know how to develop it.

If you're not a smart worker, it's about how hard you work double the amount from the heart; if you're not a hard worker, it's about how smart you work but times two from the brain.

The employment equation used to be built on a foundation of two-way loyalty. The world has changed. Today, successful employment relationships can only be sustained on a foundation of two-way honesty

[There is no shortage of scientific talent.] But [I am] much less optimistic about the managerial vision [of the pharmaceutical industry] to catalyse these talents to deliver the results we all want.

Only a prostitute will trade her valuables for money, so you shouldn't sell your God given ideas and talents for money, because you don't own it in any way but should be by a divine authority.

Listen," Mac interrupted, "you still have to knock it out of the park. But it's a degree-of-difficulty thing. You're doing a triple lutz and she's skating. You're the Sasha Cohen here.

I think that at a certain age, say fifteen or sixteen, poetry is like masturbation. But later in life good poets burn their early poetry, and bad poets publish it. Thankfully I gave up rather quickly.

est practices are useful reference points, but they must come with a warning label : The more you rely on external intelligence, the less you will value an internal idea. And this is the age of the idea

While my friends struggled and calculated, I reached a solution by a set of floating steps that were partly visual, partly just a feeling for what was right. It was hard to explain how I knew what I knew.

I quit because I was good, and when you’re good and a girl at something, you should be suspicious.’‘Of what?’‘Of what part of yourself you didn’t know you were selling.

Don't you know about the praying mantis that waved its arms angrily in front of an approaching carriage, unaware that they were incapable of stopping it? Such was the high opinion it had of its talents.

Hard work sends your opponent a message. It says you’re not talented enough to win on intrinsic merit alone. I sent my opponent a message. It said, “I’m to lazy to edit before hitting send.

It might be said of Miss [Djuna] Barnes,” [T.S. Eliot] wrote, “who is incontestably one of the most original writers of our time, that never has so much genius been combined with so little talent.

If you want to wait till your black hairs turn grey and your teeth start pulling out before you become a leader, you are either too fast to prove your ignorance, or you are too late to know who you are made of.

There is no excuse for anyone to write fiction for public consumption unless he has been called to do so by the presence of a gift. It is the nature of fiction not to be good for much unless it is good in itself.