Life expects us to challenge the status-quo YET it holds us responsible for ONLY what we can ordinarily do. Life doesn't ask us for too much; it says to do more, expand your lens. Expand your skills, expand your tools, expand your mind. To do more, be more!

The reason is that they utter these words of theirs not by virtue of a skill, but by a divine power - otherwise, if they knew how to speak well on one topic thanks to a skill, they would know how to speak about every other topic too.

You would not believe what skill, power and ability your total intelligence possesses until you lose your balance.

You would not believe what skill, power and ability your total intelligence possesses until you are in desperate need.

Marrying Gretchen is a good idea, darling; I would enjoy bringing her up. Teaching her to shoot, helping her with her first baby, coaching her in how to handle a knife, working out with her in martial arts, all the homey domestic skills a girl needs in this modern world.

If art is the bridge between what you see in your mind and what the world sees, then skill is how you build that bridge.

No amount of skillful invention can replace the essential element of imagination.

Sex, whatever else it is, is an athletic skill. The more you practice, the more you can, the more you want to, the more you enjoy it, the less it tires you.

Do the thing you're good at. Not many people are lucky enough to be so good at something.

Like many highly educated people, I didn't have much in the way of actual skills.

All is a-swarm with commentaries: of authors there is a dearth.

Empty-page staring again tonight. It's maddening. I suppose people who don't write (like the Connollies) imagine anything that can be though can be expressed. Well, I don't know. I can't do it. It's this sort of thing that makes me belittle the whole business: what's the good of a 'talent' if you can't do it when you want to? What should we think of a woodcarver who couldn't woodcarver? or a pianist who couldn't play the piano? Bah, likewise grrr.

loneliness can fly a helicopter through a cut-out shapeof a helicopter the same size as the helicopterand that's it's only skilland it isn't good enoughbut it's still amazing.