“What is rare is not raw talent, skill, or even confidence, but humility, diligence, and self-awareness.”

"Friendly, and Just a Bit Creepy: St. Vincent Defies Categories" in The New York Times (7 May 2009) http://www.nytimes.com/2009/05/07/arts/music/07vince.html?_r=1&ref=arts&pagewanted=all
Context: I think anyone who is creative or self-aware in any way, there’s like a humility to it, or I should say a humiliation to it. But there’s also a self-delusion — the provisional ego, as my uncle would call it. The self-delusion is the thing that makes you go, oh you know what, all the music that I’ve ever loved in the world, I want to be a part of that — hey, listen to what I have to say, it’s really important, it’s going to matter.”
You can’t apologize your way into people’s hearts... You have to go full force.

Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y6lqx-jLCac Folake Solanke speaks on the Supreme Court of Nigeria.

Source: Working with Emotional Intelligence (1998), p. 24

By Roger Garcia (former director of the Hong Kong International Film Festival)
Reuters Article by Jalil Hamid - Malaysian filmmaker struggles with hardline Islam https://www.reuters.com/article/us-malaysia-filmmaker-idUSKLR21119520070629 - 29 June 2007 - Archive https://web.archive.org/web/20210821072553/https://www.reuters.com/article/us-malaysia-filmmaker-idUSKLR21119520070629
Yasmin Ahmad retrospective at the Honolulu Academy of Arts hosted by CSEAS (Center for Southeast Asian Studies, University of Hawai`i) - Interview with Malyasian Filmmaker Yasmin Ahmad (with Wimal Dissanayake) in Section: Description http://hdl.handle.net/10125/7235 - 2007 Spring - Archive https://web.archive.org/web/20210821074323/https://scholarspace.manoa.hawaii.edu/handle/10125/7235
About Yasmin Ahmad

Part 4, LXXXVIII
Meditations of a Parish Priest (1866)

We do not ask sheep to be wolves; we, the wolves, do not ask ourselves to be sheep. Sheep can make such rules as happen to suit them--but it's foolishly naive to expect wolves to obey."
Blade of Tyshalle (2001)

Speech on being elected to the Belgian Academy, as quoted in “Lady of Letters” Pt. 4, Earthly Paradise (1966) ed. Robert Phelps