Benedict Cumberbatch Quotes

Genius is nothing more than common faculties refined to a greater intensity. There are no astonishing ways of doing astonishing things. All astonishing things are done by ordinary materials.

To do easily what is difficult for others is the mark of talent. To do what is impossible for talent is the mark of genius.

I have been lucky in my life to have met people that are special, so extraordinary talented that they somehow are on a different plane. Sometimes these amazingly talented people find a way to keep reinventing themselves to stay relevant and alive. Some fall under the crushing vibrancy of their own intensity.

Shogun is the most talented guy I've ever seen.

Things that would have made fame of a less clever man seemed tricks in his hands. It is a mistake to do things too easily.

Sometimes, magic is just someone spending more time on something than anyone else might reasonably expect.

A man possesses talent; genius possesses the man.

Upper berth, lower berth, that's the difference between talent and genius.

When nature has work to be done, she creates a genius to do it.

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

Felicity Huffman is just flawless; she's above and beyond TV and movies and this Earth.

I was actually not some sort of a child prodigy by any stretch.

We can't all be Lionel Messi, even if we want to.

Uzi is insanely good and super creative.

I don't buy into the phrase 'comedy genius.' It's like football; you can have the talent, but 90 per cent is hard work, the other ten per cent is trying to make it all look as natural as possible.

Great performers are, by definition, abnormal; they strive throughout their entire careers to separate themselves from the pack.

Beauty like hers is genius.

We measure genius by quality, not by quantity.

Talent shuffles the deck. Genius brings a new deck.

Talent without genius isn't much, but genius without talent is nothing whatsoever.

Peter Martin’s artistry is nothing short of extraordinary. To sing with him is sublime – to listen to him play is a transcendent experience.

I'd rather him (Grover Alexander) pitch a crucial game for me drunk, then anyone I've ever known sober. He was that good.

The great piano virtuoso Paderewski was once playing before an audience of the rich and the royal. After a brilliant performance, an elegant lady waxed ecstatic over the great artist. She said, "Ah Maestro, you are a genius!" Paderewski tartly replied, "Ah yes, madam, but before I was a genius I was a clod!" What he was saying was that his present acclaim was not handed to him on a silver platter. He, too, was once a little boy laboriously practicing his scales. And even at his peak, behind every brilliant performance there were countless hours of practice and preparation.

Talent and genius operate outside the rules, and theory conflicts with practice.

For I think it is the case with genius that it is not when quiescent so very much above mediocrity as the difference between the two might lead us to think, but that it has the power and privilege of rising from that level to a height utterly far from mediocrity: in other words that its greatness is that it can be so great.