Reader's question:  

For a girl of real talent the sky is the limit.

Could you explain "the sky is the limit"?

My comments:

When the sky's the limit, there's no limit at all.

If you go up in the sky, you’re going up toward the atmosphere, stratosphere and then the outer space. It’s all air and there’s really no limit – except that the air gets thinner the further up you go.

Therefore when they say for a girl of real talent, the sky is the limit, they’re really saying there’s no limit to what she can do (achieve).

Except, as she take her talents upward the sky, she might one day be in a class of few, or indeed a class of her own is she’s really successful. In other words, there’ll not be a lot of company up there.

In the same way the air gets thinner up there, the higher up the thinner still.

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本文仅代表作者本人观点，与本网立场无关。欢迎大家讨论学术问题，尊重他人，禁止人身攻击和发布一切违反国家现行法律法规的内容。

Zhang Xin has been with China Daily since 1988, when he graduated from Beijing Foreign Studies University. Write him at: zhangxin@chinadaily.com.cn, or raise a question for potential use in a future column.