Sourced

• Talent is like electricity. We don’t understand electricity. We use it.
  • Maya Angelou (b. 1928), American author and performer. Black Women Writers at Work, Ch. 1, by Claudia Tate (1983)

• Genius … means the transcendent capacity of taking trouble.
  • Thomas Carlyle (1795–1881). Life of Frederick the Great, Book iv. Chap. iii.

• Entertainment is in my genes – as I like to say.
  • Jack Dee, English stand-up comedian. From his interview on, The One Show, BBC 1 television, 29th October 2009

• Es bildet ein Talent sich in der Stille,
  Sich ein Charakter in dem Strom der Welt.
  Talent develops in quiet places, character in the full current of human life.
  • Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Torquato Tasso (1790) i, 2

• "...but talent is a dreadfully cheap commodity, cheaper than table salt. What separates the talented individual from the successful one is a lot of hard work and study; a constant process of honing. Talent is a dull knife that will cut nothing unless it is wielded with great force..."
  • Stephen King, Danse Macabre (1981)

• Talent is that which is in a man’s power; genius is that in whose power a man is.
  • James Russell Lowell (1819–1891). Rousseau and the Sentimentalists

• "It is a very rare thing for a man of talent to succeed by his talent."
  • Joseph Roux, Meditations of a Parish Priest (1886)

Unsourced

• "Genius does what it must, and talent does what it can." ~ Edward Bulwer-Lytton, Earl of Lytton, last words (attributed)

• "I've stretched a talent which is so thin it's almost transparent." ~ Bing Crosby

• "You can lock the door on talent but time will find the key." ~ Leonid S. Sukhorukov

• “Talent is what you possess; genius is what possess you.” ~ Malcolm Cowley

• “Talent — that's God's finger on the shoulder!” ~ Swami Raj

• “In the battle for existence, Talent is the punch; Tact is the clever footwork.” ~ Wilson Mizner

• "The thing is to be able to outlast the trends." ~ Paul Anka, Canadian singer and actor.

• "It may be that those who do most, dream most." ~ Stephen Leakock (1869-1944), British-Canadian economist.

• "Everyone has talent. What is rare is the courage to follow that talent to dark place where it leads." ~ Erica Jong