The Characteristics of Geniuses

From The Creative Architect: Inside the Great Midcentury Personality Study by Pierluigi Serranino -

• The power of deep concentration, tremendous patience, and self-discipline in accomplishing difficult work.
• Skepticism combined with a paradoxical willingness to believe.
• Passive surrender to his mental task, and honest frankness to belief in its expression, along with the courage to buck the current of the times.
• Spontaneity of intuitive and insightful expression.
• Unusual and original, often surprising ideas.
• Ability to generalize from the particular significant form the unimportant and the capacity for recognizing a problem that others fail to notice.
• Periodicity of productive creativity.
• Intense emotions along with strong capacity for self-control.