Paul Dano Quotes

That word 'prodigy' has such a derogatory implication. It is used to describe people who are forced to play a lot of concerts very early, people whose audience comes because of their youth, people who are exploited. None of the above really applied to me.

A genius. A criminal mastermind. A millionaire. And he is only twelve years old.

You cannot imagine how it spoils one to have been a child prodigy.

Mozart was very much an arrested adolescent.

It is a sobering thought that when Mozart was my age, he had been dead for two years.

They say geniuses mostly have great mothers. They mostly have sad fates.

Child prodigy is a curse because you've got all those terrible possibilities.

A lot of people glorify and romanticize the idea of being an early bloomer: finding success very early and being a child star. But it can also be quite dangerous.

I was always the young guy. And when you're successful when you're young, it leads to an arrested adolescence or something, y'know.

My brother is a genius. When we went to Italy, he was on the local television channel as a prodigy, who could solve very sophisticated mathematical equations. He was only seven or eight years old but he could solve mathematical problems for fourteen year olds.

I can remember wondering as a child if I were a young Macaulay or Ruskin and secretly deciding that I was. My infant mind even was bitter with those who insisted on regarding me as a normal child and not as a prodigy.

If success had come along when I was 17 it would either have killed me or sent me completely mad.

One of my first big shows, I opened up for Chris Brown; I was about 10 years old, and Chris Brown was just big; he still is one of my idols now.

People think I must have been so talented at an early age, but I don't know - was it talent or hard work? Who knows?

It is sobering to consider that when Mozart was my age he had already been dead for a year.

Some people don't need to work hard because they are so talented.

Olivier was another case of a genius, who couldn't understand why anybody would have any trouble doing this, because for him it came so easily.

It's easy to fall into the trap of believing all the hype that's written about you... Who knows? In a couple of years, you might find me in the loony bin!

I was a thirteen-year-old boy for thirty years.

Genius is immediate, but talent takes time.

To my mind, talent doesn't really exist.

Fame isn't healthy for a writer.

Look at the real prodigies, and I look like nothing compared to them.

I think it gets overused and tossed around in ways that aren't true. Every impressive achievement is not genius.

Everything in my life has happened very early, personally and professionally.