“Even the greatest talent, lacking the craft to develop it, is no more than an itch in the mind; and the higher the potential, of course, the greater the effort needed to bring it to peak achievement.

To sustain the effort, however, means cultivating the capacity to endure loneliness — not that loneliness itself is peculiar to the creative mind. Far from that, the mere fact of being human implies an essential loneliness in each of us — microcosmic as we all are; for universe may communicate with universe, but by their very nature they cannot mingle.

To say, then, that the writer’s lot is a lonely one is not to complain of this, but simply to make the point that to be creative is to be different from those who are not; and so, to that extent also, to be cut off from those others. Yet, ironically, it is out of this even deeper loneliness that the writer hopes to be able to communicate to an extent denied the non-creative ones; and the irony is accentuated by his awareness that he will never really be able to tell how far he has succeeded in this.”

                                                                                                    
(From TALENT IS NOT ENOUGH, by Mollie Hunter)