Practice makes perfect?

"We instinctively think of talent as something you're born with, as a gift, some divine spark that you have in your genes but that's not how the talent hotbeds treat it, they treat it as an act of construction."

"It flows from the scientific finding that when you operate from the edge of your ability, on the very uncomfortable razor edge of your ability your learning goes up and it doesn't go up just a little it increases quite a lot."

"... whatever task you're trying to do, reaching, failing and reaching again."

"We normally think of that sort of a struggle as being unproductive, we normally think of it as being a verdict on our ability, we can't do it ..." 
 

"There's a lot of fascinating science out there that shows how when you affect someone's identity, when the action of their sport, or their passion or their art becomes linked to their identity you can tap into all kinds of energy that they can put into practice, that they can put into building that skill."

ABC Radio National
http://www.abc.net.au/radionational/programs/allinthemind/practice-makes-perfect/3611212

Daniel Coyle, 2009, The Talent Code,  Arrow Books
http://thetalentcode.com/author/ 

the function of art

"Allowing that the function of art is to transmute what in reality is almost unbearable, what in life is so moving because it is so beautiful or so frightening that we can hardly face it straight for ourselves, then the attitude of an artist who takes such experiences apart for us and puts them together again in a manner that we can look at them is ... idealistic ... creating a work of art is (an act) of faith in man's ability to construct as well as destroy ... the artist's optimism is to be shared; all good work is a celebration of affection."

from Picasso by Keith Sutton, published by Paul Hamlyn, London, 1962.

Alain de Botton on Montaigne

from The consolations of philosophy,  Penguin, 2000.

p. 158 "... being incomprehensible offers unparalleled protection against having nothing to say."


p. 159 "But writing with simplicity requires courage, for there is a danger that one will be overlooked, dismissed as simpleminded ... Montaigne wondered whether the majority of university scholars would have appreciated Socrates, a man they professed to revere above all others, if he had approached them in their own towns, devoid of the prestige of Plato's dialogues, in his dirty cloak, speaking in plain language ... "


p. 160 "It (Montaigne's essay) is a plea ... to refrain from considering ourselves as fools if, because of a hole in our budget or our education, our cloaks are simple and our vocabulary no larger than that of a stallholder in Les Halles."


http://www.alaindebotton.com/philosophy.asp

Picasso

"Every child is an artist. The problem is how to remain an artist once one grows up."