Elvis transcends his talent to the point of dispensing with it altogether.

Elvis transcends his talent to the point of dispensing with it altogether.

We make the oldest stories new when we succeed, and we are trapped by the old stories when we fail.

Elvis' early music has drama because as he sang he was escaping limits.

It is a sure sign that a culture has reached a dead end when it is no longer intrigued by its myths.

No failure in America, whether of love or money, is ever simple; it is always a kind of betrayal, of a mass of shadowy, shared hopes.

It may be that the most interesting American struggle is the struggle to set oneself free from the limits one is born to, and then to learn something of the value of those limits.

Bob Dylan continues to release odd and unsettling records, and to do odd and unsettling things on stage. So the term 'still' seems meaningless to me. But the real answer is simple: I listen to Bob Dylan for pleasure more than I listen to anyone else for pleasure.

Farber had a huge effect on me as a writer. I don't mean I write like him. Farber is, first of all, a great stylist, a great writer. Anyone can read Manny Farber's film criticism, whether that person is a novelist, a poet, another critic, a historian, and learn a lot about writing by reading him.

Hearing things like 'Wake Up' by Lora Logic, or the Raincoats' 'In Love' - that was something I wasn't prepared for. I couldn't hear anything that came before it in the music, and I didn't want to. I was absolutely in love with its out-of-nowhereness.

I had tremendous fun fooling around with the way people talked about songs, just the way that became another way of understanding the world.

I learned that when something just has to be said to move the discussion along, or broaden it or deepen it, if I can just keep my mouth shut for five minutes a student will say it. So for me a lot of teaching is about keeping my mouth shut.

I never find myself even catching lyrics until something in the sound has taken me captive. Thinking about anything else is just the pleasurable byproduct of wow.

I want another idea, another project, but you can't make them up. They show up.

I'm a fan of Oliver Stone. I like his movies, I like his excess, and I think he has a great capacity for empathy and it comes out more powerfully in this movie than in any of his other films, even the formal 'I'm identifying with the underdog' movies like 'Born on the Fourth of July.'

If 'Mystery Train' is my Nixon book and 'Lipstick Traces' my Reagan book, 'Invisible Republic' is my Bill Clinton book. I really liked Clinton. He made me proud to be part of this country again. For all of his failings, the way he put all that he'd done in jeopardy, I supported him from beginning to end.

Patriotism in America, as I understand it, is a matter of suffering, when the country fails to live up to its promises, or actively betrays them.

The Sixties are most generously described as a time when people took part - when they stepped out of themselves and acted in public, as people who didn't know what would happen next, but who were sure that acts of true risk and fear would produce something different from what they had been raised to take for granted.

You're going to react to a painting in a way that the painting demands you react.

Punk to me was a form of free speech. It was a moment when suddenly all kinds of strange voices that no reasonable person could ever have expected to hear in public were being heard all over the place.

Elvis transcends his talent to the point of dispensing with it altogether.

If you've got talent, stick with it... because talent wins out, without a doubt.

Eric McCormack is directing talent waiting to happen.

Interest is the spur of the people, but glory that of great souls. Invention is the talent of youth, and judgment of age.

Actors get pigeonholed very quickly, particularly movie actors. In the theater, one is more used to casting people against type and trusting that their talent and skill will get them through.

Doing easily what others find difficult is talent; doing what is impossible for talent is genius.

I'm really happy that I got to work with such fresh talent. In a day when record companies are not particularly good at encouraging young, talented songwriters to come forward and get exposure, I think it's important to give tomorrow's songwriters the opportunity.

Write verse, not poetry. The public wants verse. If you have a talent for poetry, then don't by any means mother it, but try your hand at verse.

A best-seller is the golden touch of mediocre talent.

My big ears indicated a talent for music. This thrilled me.

You want to do something that shows some type individuality and talent and imagination - at the same time, you want to be truthful to the predecessors, because obviously the audience liked something about them and you have to replicate that experience to a certain extent.

The Negroes have little invention, but strong powers of imitation, so that they readily acquire mechanic arts. They have a great talent for music, and all their external senses are remarkably acute.

Two kinds of men generally best succeed in political life; men of no principle, but of great talent; and men of no talent, but of one principle - that of obedience to their superiors.

God gives talent. Work transforms talent into genius.

We worked very hard to make the lyrics suit the music. I can't, like Elton John, for example, compose by lyrics. Elton has a great talent for that. Whatever you give him, including your questions, he composes in half an hour and makes a great song out of it.

I'll always be there because I'm a skilled professional actor. Whether or not I've any talent is beside the point.

Ry Cooder for me is a master, a great master that has a wonderful feel for Cuban music. He's also paid tribute my talent a bit, even though I don't know half of what he knows.

The talent of a true writer and poet is in the ear.

Celebrity is the chastisement of merit and the punishment of talent.

Talent develops in quiet places, character in the full current of human life.

Talent is like a faucet, while it is open, one must write.

Writing is no dying art form in America because most published writers here accept the wisdom and the necessity of encouraging the talent that follows in their footsteps.

But Madonna has a small amount of talent when it comes to movies.

I was much more interested in the orchestra than the piano, but I did become fairly proficient as a pianist and my teachers felt I had talent and wanted me to become a good concert pianist and earn my living that way.

It takes little talent to see what lies under one's nose, a good deal to know in what direction to point that organ.

Don't show off every day, or you'll stop surprising people. There must always be some novelty left over. The person who displays a little more of it each day keeps up expectations, and no one ever discovers the limits of his talent.

Detroit is full of talent.

Any writer, I suppose, feels that the world into which he was born is nothing less than a conspiracy against the cultivation of his talent.

Much as I cared for Joseph Kennedy, he was a classic example of that person in the arts with lots of brains and drive but little taste or talent.