Wunderkind Quotes

We would kiss slowly, like scientists who analyzed the chemistry of passion, the electricity of desperation, the heat of loneliness, the sudden fluidity of time.

Youth is feeling seventy years old, misanthropic, and ready to die at fifteen

Forcing a child into adult pursuits is one of the subtlest varieties of soul murder. Very often we find that the narcissist was deprived of his childhood. Consider the gifted child, the Wunderkind: the answer to his mother's prayers and the salve to her frustrations… The Wunderkind narcissist refuses to grow up. In his mind, his tender age formed an integral part of the precocious miracle that he once was. One looks much less phenomenal and one's exploits and achievements are much less awe-inspiring at the age of 40 than the age of 4. Better stay young forever and thus secure an interminable stream of Narcissistic Supply. So, the narcissist abjures all adult skills and chores: he never takes out a driver's license; he does not have children; he rarely has sex; he never settles down in one place; he rejects intimacy. In short, he renounces adulthood. Absent adult skills he assumes no adult responsibilities. He expects indulgence from others.

Because if we were all created idealists, then life was bound to be one relentless disappointment. But then, there was also music. We unlearned the lies with one hand and repeated them with the other.

My wunderkind brother, who skipped a grade and is currently outshining me in every aspect of our senior year, would have been the logical choice.

Ich hatte einige Rollen in meinem Leben gespielt – das Wunderkind, das Opfer der Abkehr, die Widerstandskämpferin, die Attentäterin. Aber jetzt war ich nur noch ich.

El humo salía como adormecido de los rosados labios de él y se enredaba en una niebla gris por los lisos cabellos y la frente infantil de Frances

Carlsen might have been a young academic rock star and biology’s wunderkind,

Vergiss es einfach«, sagte er noch mal. Kurze Zeit später fuhren ein liebeskranker Lehrer, ein manisch-depressiver drogensüchtiger Deutschafrikaner und ein litauisches Wunderkind mit einem gelben VW die Autobahn entlang.

Ich war so was wie ein Wunderkind in Sachen Physik und Mathematik, wollte Kernphysiker werden, habe dann aber über den Schriftsteller Hans Henny Jahnn promoviert. Ich habe sämtliche meiner Karrieren zerstört, bevor sie anfingen. Das mache ich immer noch so.

Frases musicales balanceándose locamente. Notas que había tocado cayendo unas sobre otras como un puñado de canicas escaleras abajo.

Andy Masen was the Maine Attorney General's Wunderkind, and there were those who said that someday--and not too distant a day, either--he would lead the A.G.'s criminal division. Andy Masen's sights were set a good deal higher than that. He hoped to be Attorney General himself in 1984, and in a position to run for Governor by 1987. And after eight years as Governor, who knew?

Prepárate entonces para ella. Esto es un andante, pero no una pieza de salón según tú la has tocado. Empieza suavemente, piano, y no hagas el crescendo hasta llegar al arpegio. Hazlo cálido y dramático. Y aquí abajo, donde pone dolce, haz cantar a la melodía

Perhaps out interior life was the only space that hadn't yet been nationalized and so we guarded it maniacally, shielding it even from out lover's eyes. We hoarded our demons privately, in the darkest corners of our souls.

Axel Low. Author extraordinaire. Word wunderkind. The page-turning prince.” I barely hear his muttered, “save me,” before he slides a cell from his back pocket. “Are you calling Axel?” “I’m calling my agent and telling her I can’t do this.

Zum Beispiel trägt die Wunderkind Frau im Winter einen Rock, der überhaupt nicht wärmt und aussieht wie aus Papier genäht, bei näherer Betrachtung aber aus teuerster Seide ist. [...] Der Betrachter fragt, wo friert sie? Und die Antwort ist, sie friert nie.

Nobody asks about Beethoven’s mother’s own life—a fairly miserable round of pregnancy, childbirth, and child death. Was Maria Magdalena Keverich van Beethoven put on earth only to produce her wunderkind? Might she have had gifts of her own that she never got to offer the world?

One exemplar of that pending disruption is teenager Jack Andraka, who at the age of fourteen single-handedly developed an early-stage detection test for pancreatic cancer that costs just three cents. His approach (awaiting peer review) is 26,000 times cheaper, 400 times more sensitive, and 126 times faster than today’s diagnostics. Big Pharma has no idea how to deal with Jack, who is one of many wunderkinds emerging globally, all of them with the potential to disrupt great companies and long-established industries. The Jacks of the world bring exponential

twilight falls on Fifth Avenue, more than 500 Oscar-winning actresses and actors, Wall Street titans, Silicon Valley wunderkinds, fashion designers and Hollywood

Spinoza? I Hardly Know Her! Whether or not Baruch Spinoza (1632–1677) was an atheist wunderkind who saw reason as the end of superstition or a heretic with a semi-decent Latin teacher, he changed the course of intellectual history with his Ethics. Say what you will about what happens next, but the mere fact that a seventeeth-century Jew can light upon the concept of reality as perfection without ever having attended a yoga class is reason enough to include him in this illustrious tome. Other big ideas: Man is free to think and feel as reason dictates, and it’s not reality that blows; rather, it’s our perception of reality. Snuggle up to that on a cold, dark night.

When deployed in rap vernacular, the word villain feels slightly anachronistic, particularly when prefaced by the adjective mother-fuckin’. It’s a little old-timey. But there simply wasn’t a word that better described N.W.A’s public aspirations with such accuracy. I suppose gangsta is the only other word that came close, a modifier so flexible it could even be used to describe how rappers operated their cars. If you lowered the seat and tilted your body toward the vehicle’s passenger side, the posture was referred to as the “gangsta lean.” Spawned in 1972 by forgotten R&B wunderkind William DeVaughn, “gangsta lean” is an amazingly evocative term, particularly to those who did not initially know what it meant. But once you unpacked the definition, it merely outlined a villainous way to drive your jalopy to White Castle, operating from the position that appearing villainous was an important way to appear at all possible times. This was very, very important to the members of N.W.A. It was the only thing they seemed to worry about. Everything they attempted had to possess criminal undertones. I can only assume they spent hours trying to deduce villainous ways to microwave popcorn (and if they’d succeeded, there would absolutely be a song about it, assumedly titled “Pop Goes the Corn Killa” or “45 Seconds to Bitch Snack”).

There were two types of ghosts, it occurred to me: those with souls but no bodies, and those with bodies but no souls.

Everyone has hidden potential. This book is about how we unlock it. There’s a widely held belief that greatness is mostly born—not made. That leads us to celebrate gifted students in school, natural athletes in sports, and child prodigies in music. But you don’t have to be a wunderkind to accomplish great things.

Once again, between the century-old tree trunks, the nocturnal fauna heard a cry ring out, made by a small human, the wunderkind of the animal kingdom, master of fire and metal, but just as fragile when it collided with the laws of physics and the cosmos.

You think I’m hot stuff, don’t you? You, lying there every day, dreaming about rainbows. Well, I’m not. I’m just a Glendale Wunderkind. I know all there is to know about music, and there’s one like me in every Glendale on earth, every one-horse conservatory, every tank-town university, every park band. We can read anything, play anything, arrange anything, and we’re just no good. Punks. Like you. God, now I know where I get it from. Isn’t that funny? You start out a Wunderkind, then find out you’re just a goddam punk.

Data has uncovered that the media gives us a distorted view of the age of typical entrepreneurs. A recent study found that the median age of entrepreneurs featured in business magazines is twenty-seven years old. The media loves telling us the sexy stories of the wunderkinds who created major companies. But how old is the typical entrepreneur, really? A recent study of the entire universe of entrepreneurs found that the average successful entrepreneur is forty-two years old. And the odds of starting a successful business increase up until the age of sixty. Further, the advantage of age in entrepreneurship is true even in tech, a field that most people believe requires youth to master the new tools.

It is important to remember that overweening, smothering, spoiling, overvaluing, and idolising the child – are all forms of parental abuse. There is nothing more narcissistically-gratifying than the admiration and adulation (Narcissistic Supply) garnered by precocious child-prodigies (Wunderkinder). Narcissists who are the sad outcomes of excessive pampering and sheltering become addicted to it.