#talent

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. ↗

— P.D. James

#style #talent #writers #writing #writing-craft

You cannot help being a female, and I should be something of a fool were I to discount your talents merely because of their housing. ↗

— Laurie R. King

#sherlock-holmes #talents #sherlock-holmes

I never thought I was particularly talented, and to be honest with you, I still don't. ↗

— Willie Aames

#i #never #particularly #still #talented

Your talent is your art. It is not to be taken for granted. ↗

— Paula Abdul

#granted #taken #taken for granted #talent #your

There are many talented people. ↗

— Paula Abdul

#people #talented #talented people

A just and reasonable modesty does not only recommend eloquence, but sets off every great talent which a man can be possessed of. ↗

— Joseph Addison

#eloquence #every #great #great talent #just

At fifteen, beauty and talent do not exist; there can only be promise of the coming woman. ↗

— Honore de Balzac

#coming #exist #fifteen #only #promise

It takes little talent to see what lies under one's nose, a good deal to know in what direction to point that organ. ↗

— W. H. Auden

#direction #good #good deal #know #lies

I began as a boy with artistic talent... as a visual artist... I thought that was what I'd become and in my late teens drifted into reading serious literature. ↗

— Russell Banks

#artistic #become #began #boy #drifted

Any writer, I suppose, feels that the world into which he was born is nothing less than a conspiracy against the cultivation of his talent. ↗

— James A. Baldwin

#any #born #conspiracy #cultivation #feels