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 am sure that God keeps no one waiting unless he sees that it is good for him to wait.
Most people dislike vanity in others, whatever share they have of it themselves; but I give it fair quarter, wherever I meet with it, being persuaded that it is often productive of good to the possessor, and to others who are within his sphere of action: and therefore, in many cases, it would not be altogether absurd if a man were to thank God for his vanity among the other comforts of life.
Writer's block is a natural affliction. Writers who have never experienced it have something wrong with them. It means there isn't enough friction-that they aren't making enough of an effort to reconcile the contradictions of life. All you get is sweet monotonous flow. Writer's block is nothing to commit suicide over. It simply indicates some imbalance between your experience and your art, and I think that's constructive.
Look behind you: What have you learned? Look around you: What is happening to others? Look above you: What does God expect of you? Look besides you: What resources are available to you?
I got taught a lot of great lessons by superhero comics as a kid about virtue and self-sacrifice and responsibility. And those were an important part of imprinting my DNA with ethical and moral values.
Sometimes the ideas that mean the most to you will feel true long before you can quite formulate them or justify them.
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