"Talent" is a stupid excuse for lazy people, so they won't have to practise. If world would be based only on talent, not practice and repetitivness, we would be somewhere in late antiqiuty at best.

I believe that practice indeed helps but I also think that you have to have some kind of talent to begin with, however small it might be.

That's bullcrap; like at 9.999 hours of practice i'm a noob and suddenly I'm an expert. There's no clear frontier, and it all depends on the artist's potential. Some are born incredibly gifted and become expert very quickly, others will never be no matter how long they practice. Though I admit practicing is absolutely necessary in any case.

Practice, PROPER practice, will always help you improve. It's nothing without talent though. Someone who just doesn't have the potential will waste their time. The flip side is that you have to practice it right. Every time you do something wrong takes like 10 times doing it right to counteract it. I truly think that if you take your time, and do it right every time until it becomes ingrained in your mind and body, you can become an expert in less than the 10,000 hours.