I always wonder why there are some people who are absolutely determined to believe that there is no such thing as talent, and that there must have been some special circumstances that allowed them to learn those skills.

Well, lady, I was born into a family with world class talent - all of them geniuses. My IQ was measured at 165 when I was 9 and at off-the-graph when I was 45. My late brother was measured at 185. One look at my sister and her ballet teacher told my mother she was world class. We didn't have television in those days, so nobody could have taught my sister anything. My brother had the voice of any angel.

My mother was a straight out psychopath and neither of my parents parented us. They were absent. We grew up with three parents at home.

I was abused to the degree that every counsellor who has dealt with me told me people like me are generaly dead by the time they're 25. Yet I was already published by the time I was 10 years old.

When I was 55, I returned to do college and studied math alongside my daughter. The tutor told me that he had a masters in math from UCLA and he had never seen anyone do math the way my daughter and I could. We could study up the particular lesson, do a test an hour later, and then get 100% in half the time allocated.

You may think talent is overrated. I don't. I basically spot the difference between anyone who has a talent with someone who has struggled for 15 years to obtain the same level of skill and never can. It takes one to known one.

Incidentally, my daughter and I are gifted in both the arts and the sciences, as was my father and my mother.

I've had no drive, or whatever explanation you want to give to these children. I suspect the real reason people don't want to accept that there is such a thing as talent is that if there is, and if they haven't got it, it pretty much means they aren't going to measure up despite all their effort in the world.