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I think it was Fran Lebowitz who said that there are no writing prodigies. You have to have something to write about.
Sep 19, 2025
You could be a music prodigy at age 4, like Mozart, but you can't be a writing prodigy.
I call prodigy all that is invented, all that begins to exist from the second it is conceived, it is the process not the results, the principle and not the fruits.
I was called a dance prodigy since I was young. A prodigy is like a genius. But I'm not a genius. It's just that what I do a little bit better than others, and that happens to be dancing.
I was born because it was a habit in those days, people didn't know anything else ... I was not a Child Prodigy, because a Child Prodigy is a child who knows as much when it is a child as it does when it grows up.
The word "prodigy" was thrown around a lot, but I didn't understand what that meant, or the weight of it. It didn't really mean anything to me, until I was older and could look back on it.
There is no book so poor that it would not be a prodigy if wholly made by a single man.
Oddly enough, my partner went on Prodigy when it first came out, and I ended up playing with some of that stuff!.
I'm perpetually curious as to what happened to all those supposed prodigies who were singled out while I and my coterie of far more interesting malcontents passed on.
I was never pegged to be the next great American tennis player by any means. I wasn't a prodigy. I'm a late bloomer. Whatever happens, I'm proud of what I've done.
All Prodigy music is raw, and that will never change, the production is raw, the sounds are dirty, you can't get away from that. Take it or leave it.
A kindly gesture bestowed by us on an animal arouses prodigies of understanding and gratitude.
I was never a prodigy. I was never a child genius.
I think it's fair to say that Nina Simone was a prodigy.
I only discovered electronic music as a teenager and I still love the Prodigy and Massive Attack.
If a sense of duty tortures a man, it also enables him to achieve prodigies.
Convulsions in nature, disorders, prodigies, miracles, though the most opposite of the plan of a wise superintendent, impress mankind with the strongest sentiments of religion.
SIREN, n. One of several musical prodigies famous for a vain attempt to dissuade Odysseus from a life on the ocean wave. Figuratively, any lady of splendid promise, dissembled purpose and disappointing performance.
There's a stark difference between the words 'prodigy' and 'genius.' Prodigies can very quickly learn what other people have already figured out; geniuses discover that which no one has ever previously discovered. Prodigies learn; geniuses do.
I confess that Magic teacheth many superfluous things, and curious prodigies for ostentation; leave them as empty things, yet be not ignorant of their causes. But those things which are for the profit of men -- for the turning away of evil events, for the destroying of sorceries, for the curing of diseases, for the exterminating of phantasms, for the preserving of life, honor, or fortune -- may be done without offense to God or injury to religion, because they are, as profitable, so necessary.
Those who 'cursed the day they were born' must have been infant prodigies.
Child prodigy is a curse because you've got all those terrible possibilities.
Every time that a people which has long crouched in slavery and ignorance is moved to its lowest depths there appear monsters and heroes, prodigies of crime and prodigies of virtue.
Sometimes, the Angel [of Music] leans over the cradle... and that is how there are little prodigies who play the fiddle at six better than men of fifty, which, you must admit is very wonderful. Sometimes, the Angel comes much later, because the children are naughty and won't learn their lessons or practice their scales. And sometimes, he does not come at all, because the children have a wicked heart or a bad conscience.
And yes, again, that was it exactly. A retyper and not a writer. A prodigy and not a genius.
The ancients of the ideal description, instead of trying to turn their impracticable chimeras, as does the modern dreamer, into social and political prodigies, deposited them in great works of art, which still live while states and constitutions have perished, bequeathing to posterity not shameful defects but triumphant successes.
What a chimera then is man. What a novelty! What a monster... what a contradiction, what a prodigy
Nobody told me I was a child prodigy.
I don't consider myself a particularly young chess player. I have been playing in the best tournaments in the world since I was 16 years old. In other sports, if you have been playing for seven years, you are not a young prodigy any more. You're one of the pros.
Battles, revolutions, pestilence, famine, and death, are never the effect of those natural causes, which we experience. Prodigies,omens, oracles, judgments, quite obscure the few natural events, that are intermingled with them. But as the former grow thinner every pagewe soon learn, that there is nothing mysterious or supernatural in the case, but that all proceeds from the usual propensity of mankind towards the marvellous, and that, though this inclination may at intervals receive a check from sense and learning, it can never be thoroughly extirpated.
The Internet will win because it is relentless. Like a cannibal, it even turns on it own. Though early portals like Prodigy and AOL once benefited from their first-mover status, competitors surpassed them as technology and consumer preferences changed.
I have never been a child prodigy. When I think back to my childhood, I can not discern any sign of future success. My only real talent couldn't be found in any curriculum: whistling.
Many people used to call me a child prodigy, but I never thought that. I knew that I had learned everything, that I had very good circumstances.
For every child prodigy that you know about, at least 50 potential ones have burned out before you even heard about them.
An infant prodigy of nine is shoved upon the stage in white. She starts off in a dismal whine about a dark and stormy night, a burglar, whose heart is true, despite his wicked-looking face, who puts the little child in doom, to save her mamma's jewel case. This may bring tears to every eye; it does not set my heart on fire. I'd like to stand serenely by and watch that horrid child expire.
Albert [Brooks] was rare in that he could make adults laugh. He was a prodigy. At age 15 and 16, he could make my dad laugh uncontrollably. And whenever we had parties, some of the funniest people of my generation - whether it was Billy Crystal or Robin Williams or John Belushi - would be doing shtick.
In life's last scene what prodigies surprise, Fears of the brave, and follies of the wise! From Marlborough's eyes the streams of dotage flow, And Swift expires a driveller and a show.
I can remember wondering as a child if I were a young Macaulay or Ruskin and secretly deciding that I was. My infant mind even was bitter with those who insisted on regarding me as a normal child and not as a prodigy.
I have always been a singer, a writer, and a musician, not as a prodigy or as in a trade handed to me by my parents, but because of an inner voice or maybe a command from beyond reality as it is usually defined.
When you saw the movie "The Curious Case of Benjamin Button," that was Michael [Jackson]'s story write large. Born as an elderly person, Benjamin Button was, in the F. Scott Fitzgerald novel and in the film starring Brad Pitt, he dies as a newborn child. Michael Jackson's childhood was one of enormous, prodigious production.He was a child prodigy, he was a wunderkind.
Everyone wants a prodigy to fail; it makes our mediocrity more bearable.
When I was four, I think I just wanted to make noise. When I was about 10 years old I was given five CDs for my birthday: Pink Floyd's 'Dark side of the Moon,' the Sex Pistols, Prodigy, Jimi Hendrix, and I can't remember the fifth one, but really different kinds of music. That's when I started to grasp it and enjoy it, listening to it. Then I started being in bands at school.
I wrote half the record in 2002, which basically concluded with us releasing "Baby's Got A Temper," the last single. I think after the disappointment of that record for myself with the lack of energy and the way the record came out, I would say that was probably the low point of The Prodigy.
Freddie [Highmore] is great in the movie [August Rush]. It comes out this Fall and I play a young cellist, a prodigy, who is touring and doing concerts. She's very young and has a one-night fling with an Irish rocker, played Jonathan Rhys Meyers, who is also a really talented musician.
Our forefathers looked upon nature with more reverence and horror, before the world was enlightened by learning and philosophy, and loved to astonish themselves with the apprehensions of witchcraft, prodigies, charms, and inchantments. There was not a village in England that had not a ghost in it, the church-yards were all haunted, every large common had a circle of fairies belonging to it, and there was scarce a shepherd to be met with who had not seen a spirit.
But how shall we excuse the supine inattention of the Pagan and philosophic world to those evidences which were presented by the hand of Omnipotence, not to their reason, but to their senses? During the age of Christ, of his apostles, and their first disciples, the doctrine which they preached was confirmed by innumerable prodigies. The lame walked, the blind saw, the sick were healed, the dead were raised, daemons were expelled, and the laws of Nature were frequently suspended for the benefit of the church.
What a chimaera then is man, what a novelty, what a monster, what chaos, what a subject of contradiction, what a prodigy! Judge of all things, yet an imbecile earthworm; depository of truth, yet a sewer of uncertainty and error; pride and refuse of the universe. Who shall resolve this tangle?
It is only when aggression is legitimate that one can expect prodigies of valour.
How many may a man of diffusive conversation count among his acquaintances, whose lives have been signalized by numberless escapes; who never cross the river but in a storm, or take a journey into the country without more adventures than befel the knights-errant of ancient times in pathless forests or enchanted castles! How many must he know, to whom portents and prodigies are of daily occurrence; and for whom nature is hourly working wonders invisible to every other eye, only to supply them with subjects of conversation?
Nothing is so convenient as a decisive argument ... which must at least silence the most arrogant bigotry and superstition, and free us from their impertinent solicitations. I flatter myself, that I have discovered an argument ... which, if just, will, with the wise and learned, be an everlasting check to all kinds of superstitious delusion, and consequently, will be useful as long as the world endures. For so long, I presume, will the accounts of miracles and prodigies be found in all history, sacred and profane.