"Being an artist is much more like being a carpenter than like being God... What we do is a craft. I mean you can have a great inner talent and a lot of people do, but without craft it's very hard for the talent to emerge."
–– John Kander (b. 1927), American theatre composer
Source: Adam Moss. The Work of Art: How Something Comes From Nothing. New York: Penguin Press, 2024; p. 15.
via 2020 Aboveground Art Supplies Knapsack Sketchbook, 2024 p. 48.
"When a successful author analyzes the reasons for his success, he generally underestimates the talent he was born with, and overestimates his skill in employing it."
–– W.H. Auden (1907-1973), British-born American poet
Source: Adam Moss. The Work of Art: How Something Comes From Nothing. New York: Penguin Press, 2024; p. 15.
via 2020 Aboveground Art Supplies Knapsack Sketchbook, 2024 p. 48.
"I restore myself when I'm alone. A career is born in public, talent in privacy."
–– Marilyn Monroe (1926-1962), American actress and model
via: Art Alternatives Knapsack Sketchbook L 2024, p. 30.
"In the long run, curiosity and stamina trump talent."
–– Steven Heighton (1961-2022), Canadian novelist, poet, short-story writer
Source: Steven Heighton. Work Book. Toronto, Ontario: ECW Press, 2011, p. 25.
via: Commonplace Book 2022, 2023, p. 113.
"What I did have, which others perhaps didn't, was a capacity for sticking at it, which really is the point, not the talent at all. You have to stick at it."
–– Doris Lessing (1919-2013), Iranian born British-Zimbabwean novelist
"Ninety per cent of talent is confidence, an absence of judgement that feeds a willingness to fail that produces a greater likelihood of success."
–– Ian Brown (b. 1954), Canadian journalist and author
Source: Ian Brown. "Old skier, new tricks." The Globe and Mail, Saturday January 5, 2019, p.10-11; p. 11.
via: Day In & Day Out Notebook, 2019, p. 35.
"The person born with a talent they are meant to use will find their greatest happiness in using it."
–– Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (1749-1832), German author, scientist, and statesman
via 2020 Aboveground Art Supplies Knapsack Sketchbook, 2022, p. 12.
"Talent is insignificant. I know a lot of talented ruins. Beyond talent lie all the usual words: discipline, love, luck, but, most of all, endurance."
–– James Baldwin (1924-1987), American writer and activist
"[Y]ou will never be an artist if you don't finish your work. It sounds so simple, and so obvious, and it is. But it's also true: You will never become an artist if you don't spend every day being an artist.
Talent is sexy. Work is not. Only one, however is actually essential. Your career begins if you have the former. But it's finished if you don't do the latter."
–– Hanya Yanagihara (b. 1974), American writer and editor
Source: New York Times Style Magazine.
via: Sketchbook 30, 2019, p. 131.
"One needs more than ambition and talent to make a success of anything, really. There must be love and a vocation."
–– Jessye Norman (1945-2019), American opera singer and recitalist
