Living with talent

"If living is an art it is a strange one, an art of everything, and particularly of spirited pleasure. Its developed form would involve a number of qualities sewn together: intelligence, charm, good fortune, unforced virtue, along with wisdom, taste, knowledge, understanding, and the recognition of anguish and conflict as part of life. Wealth wouldn't be essential, but the intelligence to accumulate it where necessary might be. The people I can think of who live with talent are the ones who have free lives, conceiving of great schemes and seeing them fulfilled. They are, too, the best company."
Hanif Kureishi, 'Intimacy', p.64-65, Faber & Faber, 1999.