You can improve your talent, but your talent is a given, a mysterious constant. You must make it the best of its kind.
Interpretation
Talent is inherent, but it requires effort to reach its full potential.
Gore Vidal's quote highlights the idea that while talent is an innate trait that each individual possesses, it is essential to cultivate and refine that talent to achieve excellence. It suggests that improvement and success depend not only on the talent itself but also on the dedication and work put into it.
In practice
In a motivational speech to students about the importance of hard work and skill development.
We must declare ourselves, become known; allow the world to discover this subterranean life of ours which connects kings and farm boys, artists and clerks. Let them see that the important thing is not the object of love, but the emotion itself.
American writers want to be not good but great; and so are neither.
Writing fiction has become a priestly business in countries that have lost their faith.
The important thing is not the object of love, but the emotion itself.
For the average American, freedom of speech is simply the freedom to repeat what everyone else is saying and no more.
Ayn Rand's 'philosophy' is nearly perfect in its immorality, which makes the size of her audience all the more ominous and symptomatic as we enter a curious new phase in our society.... To justify and extol human greed and egotism is to my mind not only immoral, but evil.
I can at any moment convert my time into money, but I do not require more of the latter than is sufficient for necessary purposes.
If we slide into a pattern of just thinking about today, we'll end up reacting to yesterday instead of shaping something more constructive in the world.
To experience anything fully and see it clearly there must be a moment of presence where conceptual thinking is not interfering with your experience of that moment.
The more you know yourself, the more clarity there is. Self-knowledge has no end - you don't come to an achievement, you don't come to a conclusion. It is an endless river.
Littera scripta manet - 'The written word will remain'. That's true, but it won't be that much comfort to me.
Ninety nine failed solutions equals a gain of 99 pieces of information.
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