But Aunt Habiba said not to worry, that everyone had wonderful things hidden inside. The only difference was that some managed to share those wonderful things, and others did not. Those who did not explore and share the precious gifts within went through life feeling miserable, sad, awkward with others, and angry too. You had to develop a talent, Aunt Habiba said, so that you could give something, share and shine. And you developed a talent by working very hard at becoming good at something. It could be anything - singing, dancing, cooking, embroidering, listening, looking, smiling, waiting, accepting, dreaming, rebelling, leaping. 'Anything you can do well can change your life', said Aunt Habiba.

In 1857, Bizet departed for Rome and spent three years there. He studied the landscape, the culture, Italian literature and art. Musically he studied the scores of the great masters. At the end of the first year he was asked to submit a religious work as his required composition. As a self-described atheist, Bizet felt uneasy and hypocritical writing a religious piece. Instead, he submitted a comic opera. Publicly, the committee accepted, acknowledging his musical talent. Privately, the committee conveyed their displeasure. Thus, early in his career, Bizet displayed an independent spirit that would be reflected in innovative ideas in his opera composition.[The Pearl Fishers - Georges Bizet, Virginia Opera]

"Joss""What?""What?" Dylan asked back."You just said my name.""No I didn't""Sorry that was me."I sat up, banging my head on the roof. "Who is that?""Hey, stay down here where the air is good, okay?" Dylan pulled me gently back down. "Hows your head?""Not good, I think.""Um, okay, so you here me. Heather's right, you do think loud. I mean, I've never heard you before, but my Talent seems to be a lot more selective than her's. But now that she's got me turned in to you-""Who are you?""It's still me, Marshall. It's Dylan. I'm right here.""My name's Joel.""Joel?""Joss, what are you talking about?" He took my face in his hands. "Who's Joel?""The voice in my head, I guess.""Jesus.

Her father sat her down and spoke to her with great seriousness. "You are not a witch, Katerina. There is magic in the world, and some of it is wholesome, and some of it is not, but it is a thing that is in the blood, and it is not in yours."The foolish will always treat you badly, because they think you are not beautiful," he said, and she knew this was true. Plain Kate. She was a plain as a stick and thin as a stick and flat as a stick. Her nose was too long and her brows too strong. Her father kissed her twice, once above each brow. "We cannot help what fools think. But understand, it is your skill with a blade that draws this talk. If you want to give up your carving, you have my blessing.""I will never give it up," she answered.

What about his style?" asked Dalgliesh who was beginning to think that his reading had been unnecessarily restricted."Turgid but grammatical. And, in these days, when every illiterate debutante thinks she is a novelist, who am I to quarrel with that? Written with Fowler on his left hand and Roget on his right. Stale, flat and, alas, rapidly becoming unprofitable...""What was he like as a person?" asked Dalgliesh."Oh, difficult. Very difficult, poor fellow! I thought you knew him? A precise, self-opinionated, nervous little man perpetually fretting about his sales, his publicity or his book jackets. He overvalued his own talent and undervalued everyone else's, which didn't exactly make for popularity.""A typical writer, in fact?" suggested Dalgliesh mischievously.

God, the devil, and Orafoura were walking along a river one day when they came across three naked women splashing in the water. God turned to the other two and said, "Ten talents to the one who can get them fully clothed the fastest." The devil, always money hungry, went first and tried to reverse seduce them. This took him fifteen minutes. Going back in time to their original nakedness, God went next and snapped his fingers and instantly they were clothed. Going back in time again, it was then Orafoura's turn. He crouched and crawled quietly up to the reeds by the river and sat down. Fifteen, thirty, forty-five minutes passed and nothing happened. Finally, God asked him what he was doing. Orafoura replied, "Watching. I'd have squandered my talents at the strip club anyway.

A recurrent question about photography is how much self expression it allows the photographer. There are two standard positions, each corresponding to a different location oh photographic skill. The opposition is neatly summed up in Bioy Casares’s novel The Adventures of a Photographer in La Plata (1989). The hero Nicolasito Almanza declares: ‘I am convinced that all of photography depends on the moment we press the release […] I believe that you’re a photographer if you know exactly when to press the release.’ In making this declaration he is responding to the opinion expressed by Mr Gruter, owner of a photographic laboratory: ‘[…] sometimes I wonder if the true work of the photographer doesn’t begin in the dark room, amid the trays and the enlarger.

Adam Kuambiana umerudi nyumbani ulikotoka, ukiongozwa na imani na mwanga wa wale uliowapenda na kuwapoteza. Hatuwezi kukumbuka kwamba umetutoka bila kukumbuka kwamba uliishi, na kwamba maisha yako yalitupa kumbukumbu nzuri tusizoweza kuzisahau haraka. Jumanne, siku ya kuuaga mwili uliokuwa ukitumiwa na wewe, wengine watasema Kwa heri lakini mimi nitasema Asante! Asante kwa sababu ya kipaji chako. Asante kwa sababu ya kujitahidi kwa kadiri ya uwezo wako wote, kutoa sauti kwa wale wote waliokuwa hawawezi kusikika. Asante kwa sababu ya kuacha dunia katika hali nzuri kuliko ulivyoikuta wakati ukiingia, na Asante kwa sababu ya maisha yako. Tukiendelea kuomboleza kifo cha Adam Kuambiana hapa duniani, wengine wanasherehekea kukutana naye huko mbinguni. Mchungaji wa uhai wa wote Mungu wa mbinguni ailaze roho yake mahali pema peponi: Yeye ni mwandishi wa hadithi ya maisha yetu na ndiye aliyeandika ukurasa wa mwisho wa hadithi ya Adam.

As I mentioned briefly on the phone, the best thing about the Air Chrysalis is that it's not an imitation of anyone. It has absolutely none of the usual new writer's sense of 'I want to be another so-and-so'. the syle, for sure, is rough,and the writing is clumsy. She even gets the title wrong: she's confusing 'chrysalis' and 'cocoon'. You could pick it apart completely if you wanted to. But the story itself has real power: it draws you in. the overall plots is a fantasy, but the descriptive details is incredibly real.The balance between the two is excellent. I don't know if words like 'originality' or Inevitability' fit here, and I suppose I might agree if someone insisted it's not at that level, but finally, after you work your way through the thing, with all its faults, it leaves a real impression- it gets to you in some strange, inexplicable way that may be a little disturbing.

In the Blue Room, Cora Cash was trying to concentrate on her book. Cora found most novels hard to sympathise with -- all those plain governesses -- but this one had much to recommend it. The heroine was 'handsome, clever, and rich', rather like Cora herself. Cora knew she was handsome -- wasn't she always referred to in the papers as 'the divine Miss Cash'? She was clever -- she could speak three languages and could handle calculus. And as to rich, well, she was undoubtedly that. Emma Woodhouse was not rich in the way that she, Cora Cash, was rich. Emma Woodhouse did not lie on a lit à la polonaise once owned by Madame du Barry in a room which was, but for the lingering smell of paint, an exact replica of Marie Antoinette's bedchamber at le petit Trianon. Emma Woodhouse went to dances at the Assembly Rooms, not fancy dress spectaculars in specially built ballrooms. But Emma Woodhouse was motherless which meant, thought Cora, that she was handsome, clever, rich and free.

Usiwe na wasiwasi, Peter. Hizo ni hisia zangu tu. Huwezi kuwa mpelelezi. Lakini, kusema ule ukweli, ningependa sana kuonana na John Murphy. Kuna kazi binafsi ningependa kumpa. Wewe unatoka Afrika, hujawahi kumwona?” Debbie alizidi kumshtua Murphy.“Nani?” Murphy aliuliza huku akitabasamu.“John Murphy wa Afrika.”“Sijawahi kumwona. Mbona unamuulizia hivyo?” Debbie alitulia. Kisha akarusha nywele ili aone vizuri.“Nampenda sana!”“Kwa nini?”“Simpendi kwa mahaba, lakini.”“Ndiyo. Kwa nini?”“OK. Nampenda kwa kipaji chake. Alichopewa na Mungu, cha ujasusi. Kusaidia watu.”“Ahaa!” Murphy alidakia, sasa akifikiri sana.“Murphy ana mashabiki wengi hapa Meksiko bila yeye mwenyewe kujua, kwa sababu ya kupambana na wahalifu wa madawa ya kulevya – hasa wa huku Latino. Tatizo lake haonekani. Wengi hudhani ni hadithi tu, kwamba hakuna mtu kama huyo hapa duniani.”“Hapana! Murphy yupo! Ni mfanyabiashara maarufu huko Tanzania. Lakini ndiyo hivyo kama unavyosema ... Haonekani!

She sang, as requested. There was much about love in the ballad: faithful love that refused to abandon its object; love that disaster could not shake; love that, in calamity, waxed fonder, in poverty clung closer. The words were set to a fine old air -- in themselves they were simple and sweet: perhaps, when read, they wanted force; when well sung, they wanted nothing. Shirley sang them well: she breathed into the feeling, softness, she poured round the passion, force: her voice was fine that evening; its expression dramatic: she impressed all, and charmed one.On leaving the instrument, she went to the fire, and sat down on a seat -- semi-stool, semi-cushion: the ladies were round her -- none of them spoke. The Misses Sympson and the Misses Nunnely looked upon her, as quiet poultry might look on an egret, an ibis, or any other strange fowl. What made her sing so? They never sang so. Was it proper to sing with such expression, with such originality -- so unlike a school girl? Decidedly not: it was strange, it was unusual. What was strange must be wrong; what was unusual must be improper. Shirley was judged.

NO MUSE IS GOOD MUSETo be an Artist you need talent, as well as a wifewho washes the socks and the children,and returns phone calls and library books and types.In other words, the reason there are so many moreMen Geniuses than Women Geniuses is not Genius.It is because Hemingway never joined the P.T.A.And Arthur Rubinstein ignored Halloween.Do you think Portnoy's creator sits through children's theatermatinees--on Saturdays?Or that Norman Mailer faced 'driver's ed' failure,chicken pox or chipped teeth?Fitzgerald's night was so tender because the fenderhis teen-ager dented happened when Papa was at a story conference.Since Picasso does the painting, Mrs. Picasso did the toilet training.And if Saul Bellow, National Book Award winner, invited thirty-threefor Thanksgiving Day dinner, I'll bet he had help.I'm sure Henry Moore was never a Cub Scout leader,and Leonard Bernstein never instructed a tricyclerOn becoming a bicycler just before he conducted.Tell me again my anatomy is not necessarily my destiny,tell me my hang-up is a personal and not a universal quandary,and I'll tell you no muse is a good museunless she also helps with the laundry.

But genius, and even great talent, springs less from seeds of intellect and social refinement superior to those of other people than from the faculty of transforming and transposing them. To heat a liquid with an electric lamp requires not the strongest lamp possible, but one of which the current can cease to illuminate, can be diverted so as to give heat instead of light. To mount the skies it is not necessary to have the most powerful of motors, one must have a motor which, instead of continuing to run along the earth's surface, intersecting with a vertical line the horizontal line which it began by following, is capable of converting its speed into lifting power. Similarly, the men who produce works of genius are not those who live in the most delicate atmosphere, whose conversation is the most brilliant or their culture the most extensive, but those who have had the power, ceasing suddenly to live only for themselves, to transform their personality into a sort of mirror, in such a way that their life, however mediocre it may be socially and even, in a sense, intellectually, is reflected by it, genius consisting in reflecting power and not int he intrinsic quality of the scene reflected.

-We need more love, to supersede hatred, -We need more strength, to resist our weaknesses, -We need more inspiration, to lighten up our innermind. -We need more learning, to erase our ignorance, -We need more wisdom, to live longer and happier, -We need more truths, to suppress deceptions, -We need more health, to enjoy our wealth, -We need more peace, to stay in harmony with our brethren -We need more smiles, to brighten up our day, -We need more hero's, and not zero's, -We need more change of ourselves, to change the lives of others, -We need more understanding, to tackle our misunderstanding, -We need more sympathy, not apathy, -We need more forgiveness, not vengeance, -We need more humility to be lifted up, -We need more patience and not undue eagerness, -We need more focus, to avoid distraction, -We need more optimism, not pessimism -We need more justice, not injustice, -We need more facts, not fiction,-We need more education, to curb illiteracy, -We need more skills, not incompetence, -We need more challenges, to make attempts, -We need more talents, to create the extraordinary, -We need more helping hands, not stingy folks, -We need more efforts, not laziness, -We need more jokes, to forget our worries, -We need more spirituality, not mean religion, -We need more freedom, not enslavement, -We need more peacemakers, not revolutionaries...with these, we create an heaven on earth.