Unrecognized Brilliance Quotes

Even primitive areas can produce a superstar.

I always felt that Bette Davis was one of the great screen actresses who never really got her due - she won two Oscars, but the last was in 1938, and that was really before all the great work that she did.

Rather than admire the mediocre great men over whom passersby nudge each other in awe, I venerate the young, unknown geniuses who die in their teens, their souls shattered - delicate, phosphorescent glowworms that one must see to know they really did exist.

Many individuals have, like uncut diamonds, shining qualities beneath a rough exterior.

'I'm Yours' was written effortlessly in about 20 minutes' time, and I honestly thought it was more of like a kids' song, and I didn't do anything with it for years.

I think children have talent and insight, but it gets beaten out of them.

There are no black women geniuses that are being named in canons. I could name a bunch, but it's not part of common knowledge. It's not how the world is taught to think about black women.

You have to learn to see the gold in dirt, which means that you try to spot people with potential as well as ideas that have potential.

There are great actors we'll never see just because they haven't had my luck.

I rage against Vincent van Gogh for needing to die at 37, after painting for only ten years.

We did a film called 'Kes,' which is about a lad with a talent that nobody can recognise, or that nobody chose to recognise.

The excitement for me lies not so much in interviewing the hard-to-get famous person, but the person whom you are about to discover. You know, like maybe the character actors who are just coming into their own and you're realizing how great they are.

There are plenty of people I've seen and thought that person is funny, or that person is really talented, and they've got something, but maybe the buying public doesn't see the same thing I see, or the stars don't align in the right way for them.

Among those people not graduating, there might be a Steve Jobs or Barack Obama. We'll never know.

If geniuses can sometimes make mistakes, cannot the rest of us on occasion be geniuses?

Many incredible artists die before they were famous.

Genius is never understood in its own time.

I get particularly depressed by the way teenagers are portrayed in the media. They are massively underestimated. They are bright, intelligent people who are given less and less opportunity. They are an ignored generation.

The books that everybody admires are those that nobody reads.

I want to be remembered. I want to have a legacy. Van Gogh only sold one painting before he died, which would mean that he wasn't famous when he was alive. But in 2017, I know who Van Gogh is.

A lot of the really great stuff fell between the tracks.

There's talent on the streets, kids with ideas who have stories to tell and never get a chance.

Strongest minds are often those whom the noisy world hears least.

It is a very lonely life that a man leads, who becomes aware of truths before their times.

Men of genius are often dull and inert in society; as the blazing meteor, when it descends to earth, is only a stone.