Talent - Strasberg

"So let us not fall into this common assumption that if we could only find the secret in the past, we would then be on the easy street. If they had any secret, it was no more than the Secret of Talent. If Michelangelo was great, it was not because he lived in the in the sixteenth century. He had talent. And if you have Talent Today, you also can be a Michelangelo - if you live as long as he did and work as hard. Never mind the Art. To work on the Sistine Chapel ceiling from a high ladder with back breaking effort for two years in order to paint those fantastically wonderful figures, it takes talent, but it also takes excruciating labour. Talent is in that sense Universal. Labour is not, and if you do not expend the proper time and effort, you will neither make use of the Talent that you have nor solve the problems that you perceive."