By David Herndon. Some people assume that creativity is a gift, bestowed or withheld by some capricious divinity. But I would invite us to consider another point of view, that creativity is a talent widely distributed among human beings, a talent which can be cultivated and developed, if one understands something of how creativity works. Accordingly, let us consider two personal statements from three extraordinarily creative individuals, the composer Mozart, the mathematician Poincare, and the painter Van Gogh.