評論
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Being alone at the forefront of a discipline also leaves you exposed and vulnerable. Eminence invites criticism and often vicious attacks. When an artist has invested years in making a sculpture, or a scientist in developing a theory, it is devastating if nobody cares.
居于學科前沿，也會令你暴露于眾人視線中，易受攻擊。卓越會招致批評，甚至往往是惡毒攻擊。藝術家傾注多年心血終于完成一件雕塑作品，科學家皓首窮年提出一種理論，到頭來若是無人問津，這種打擊無疑是災難性的。
Perhaps the most difficult thing for creative individuals to bear is the sense of loss and emptiness they experience when, for some reason, they cannot work. This is especially painful when a person feels his or her creativity drying out.
對于富有創意的個體而言，最難以忍受的事情莫過于由于某種原因而無法工作的那種失落感和空虛感。如果一個人自覺創意枯竭，或許就更加痛苦不堪了。
Yet when a person is working in the area of his or her expertise, worries and cares fall away, replaced by a sense of happiness. Perhaps the most important quality, the one that is most consistently present in all creative individuals, is the ability to enjoy the process of creation for its own sake. Without this trait, poets would give up striving for perfection and would write commercial jingles; economists would work for banks where they would earn at least twice as much as they do at universities; and physicists would stop doing basic research and join industrial laboratories where the conditions are better and the expectations more predictable.
而當一個人在自己擅長的領域里工作時，他的一切擔心和憂慮都會消失，取而代之的是一種愉悅感。也許最重要的品質，在一切富有創意的人身上最常見的一種品質，就是能夠享受創造過程本身。沒有這種品質，詩人將不再追求完美而寫些商業性的喧囂之作；經濟學家將會去銀行任職，收人至少會是大學里的兩倍；物理學家也會停止基礎研究而加人工業實驗室，那里條件優越而且結果也容易預測。
