Maggie Stiefvater Quotes

Talent is a tenant in the house owned by genius.

Talent is a flame. Genius is a fire.

There are probably very few people who have not at some time of their lives had some quality of genius. If they have not had such, it is probable that they have also been without great sorrow or great pain. They would have needed only to live sufficiently intently for a time for some quality to reveal itself. The poems of first love are a case in point, and certainly such love is a sufficient stimulus.

... Geniuses have a little extra something. There's that little something that you know is a little different.

You can do something with talent, but nothing with genius.

I know of no such thing as genius, genius is nothing but labor and diligence.

I have met so many people who say they've got a book in them, but they've never written a word. To be a writer - this may seem trite, I realize - you have to actually write.

Talent is a faculty that is highly developed, but genius commands all the faculties.

Creative genius is a divinely bestowed gift which is the coronation of the few.

Mozart was born Mozart. Charlie Parker was born Charlie Parker.

I won some genetic lottery. I always happened to be strangely good at mathematics in my head. I just popped out weird.

I was born with a natural gift. My mother recognized the talent.

You can't make a star - they just have it.

You have to have some form of talent. Getting to a skill-set when you can do something is achievable. Getting to a skill-set when you can do it an elite level is a different thing.

Genius gives birth, talent delivers.

Talent is some one faculty unusually developed; genius commands all the faculties.

He was a genius - that is to say, a man who does superlatively and without obvious effort something that most people cannot do by the uttermost exertion of their abilities.

Talent may frolic and juggle; genius realizes and adds.

You could be a music prodigy at age 4, like Mozart, but you can't be a writing prodigy.

A genius is somebody who seemingly just reaches out of nowhere.

People who can write a book usually do.

Genius is only a greater aptitude for patience.

Everybody is different. Some writers can write reams of great books and then J. D. Salinger wrote just a few. Beethoven wrote nine symphonies. They were all phenomenal. Mozart wrote some 40 symphonies, and they were all phenomenal. That doesn't mean Beethoven was a lesser writer, it's just some guys are capable of more productivity, some guys take more time.

I regret that I must so continually use the word genius, as if that should apply only to a caste as well defined from those below as income-tax payers are from the untaxed. The word genius was very probably invented by a man who had small claims on it himself; greater men would have understood better what to be a genius really was, and probably they would have come to see that the word could be applied to most people. Goethe said that perhaps only a genius is able to understand a genius.

When I'm really plugged in I find it difficult to write. It's like digging a well. If you make a void, something moves in to fill it. Writing books is like that. It's mostly about freeing up time, doing nothing, and in that time some writing starts to happen. We need to figure out how to maintain those voids.