Steven Pressfield Quotations | Page 2

The athlete knows the day will never come when he wakes up pain-free. He has to play hurt.

Writers think in metaphors. Editors work in metaphors. A great reader reads in metaphors.

Someone once asked Somerset Maughham if he wrote on a schedule or only when struck by inspiration. "I write only when inspiration strikes," he replied. "Fortunately it strikes every morning at nine o'clock sharp.

Do we have to stare death in the face to make us stand up and confront Resistance?

In other words, any act that rejects immediate gratification in favor of long-term grown, health, or integrity. Or, expressed another way, any act that derives from our high nature instead of our lower. Any of these will elicit Resistance.

Cousin, the days of gods and heroes are over." "Not to me. Not to them.

Its [Resistance] aim is to shove us away, distract us from doing our work.

We need to ascend beyond our own petty Resistance, our own negative self-judgment and self-sabotage, our own "I'm not worthy" mind-set.

There is an enemy. There is an intelligent, active, malign force working against us. Step one is to recognize this. This recognition alone is enormously powerful. It saved my life, and it will save yours.

In the hierarchy, the artist faces outward. Meeting someone new he asks himself, What can this person do for me? How can this person advance my standing? In the hierarchy, the artist looks up and looks down. The one place he can't look is that place he must: within.

Making a judgment, taking a stand and then acting against an injustice or acting to support excellence is the stuff of the everyman hero. If you are an aspiring artist and you wish to avoid “judgments,” you'll find that you have nothing to say.

The highest treason a crab can commit is to make a leap for the rim of the bucket.

On the artist's journey we are redefining and reconfiguring ourselves and our lives.

The professional tackles the project that will make him stretch. He takes on the assignment that will bear him into uncharted waters, compel him to explore unconscious parts of himself. Is he scared? Hell, yes. He's petrified.

Start before you’re ready. Good things happen when we start before we’re ready.

I am going to write my symphony; I'm just going to start tomorrow.

As resistance works to keep us from becoming who we were born to be, equal and opposite powers are counterpoised against it. These are our allies and angels.

Resistance is greatest just before the finish line.

That’s why an artist must be a warrior and, like all warriors, artists over time acquire modesty and humility. They may, some of them, conduct themselves flamboyantly in public. But alone with the work they are chaste and humble. They know they are not the source of the creations they bring into being. They only facilitate. They carry. They are the willing and skilled instruments of the gods and goddesses they serve.

Persian envoy "our arrows will black out the sun..." Dienekes of the Spartans.."Good, then we'll fight in the shade.

Don't wait for someone else to validate you. Validate yourself.

When we sit down to work, we become like a magnetized rod that attracts iron filings. Ideas come. Insights accrete.

The opposite of fear," Dienekes said, "is love.

In my experience, depth of work consists of two components. The first is recklessness; the second is discipline. Dionysian; Apollonian. Passion;reason.

But nothing really clicked for me until I gave up completely on hitting the overlap and just did what I loved, even when I thought nobody else in the world would be interested.

It may be that the human race is not ready for freedom. The air of liberty may be too rarefied for us to breathe... The paradox seems to be, as Socrates demonstrated long ago, that the truly free individual is free only to the extent of his own self-mastery. While those who will not govern themselves are condemned to find masters to govern over them.

Don't prepare, do. Don't let Resistance sucker you into wasting months on background, foundation, planning. All that can come later.

I guess what I want to say to us artists and entrepreneurs is that conventional yardsticks of success don't apply to all enterprises. Labors of love count.

You and I may only be mortals, with all the foolishness and fallibility that that state implies, but we're mortals made in the image of heaven. The gods can't do their work without us. So let's be bold, in their cause and in our own. It's our job, we humans, to make manifest that which is unmanifest-and to raise into consciousness, in this material dimension, that which had been known before only in heaven.

It is one thing to study war and another to live the warrior's life.

If we were born to overthrow the order of ignorance and injustice of the world, it’s our job to realize it and get down to business.

Resistance is not a peripheral opponent. Resistance arises from within. It is self-generated and self-perpetuated. resistance is the enemy within.

Every sun casts a shadow, and genius's shadow is Resistance.

When we conquer our fears, we discover a boundless, bottomless, inexhaustible well of passion.

The artist committing himself to his calling has volunteered for hell, whether he knows it or not. He will be dining for the duration on a diet of isolation, rejection, self-doubt, despair, ridicule, contempt, and humiliation.

It can pay off, being a hack. Given the depraved state of American culture, a slick dude can make millions being a hack. But even if you succeed, you lose, because you’ve sold out your Muse, and your Muse is you, the best part of yourself, where your finest and only true work comes from.

It's one thing to lie to ourselves. It's another thing to believe it.

When you're a working writer, sooner or later friends and acquaintances will get you alone and confide that they, too, have a book in them.

Tomorrow morning the critic will be gone, but the writer will still be there facing the blank page. Nothing matters but that he keep working.

Resistance cannot be seen, touched, heard, or smelled. But it can be felt.

The artist cannot look to others to validate his efforts or his calling. If you don't believe me, ask Van Gogh, who produced masterpiece after masterpiece and never found a buyer in his whole life.

When a novelist or screenwriter is looking for a subject, the element he's seeking is conflict. Conflict makes drama. Conflict produces great characters and memorable scenes. So war is a natural topic.

The professional loves her work. She is invested in it wholeheartedly. But she does not forget that the work is not her.

The song we’re composing already exists in potential. Our work is to find it.

It’s better to be in the arena, getting stomped by the bull, than to be up in the stands or out in the parking lot.

The last element in drama is high stakes. War, of course, is life and death - survival, not only for the story's characters, but often for the society itself. That's why I'm drawn to stories that are built around wars, even if they're not technically "war stories."

To yield to Resistance deforms our spirit. It stunts us and makes us less than we are and were born to be.

The counterfeit innovator is wildly self-confident. The real one is scared to death.

When we're living as amateurs, we're running away from our calling - meaning our work, our destiny, the obligation to become our truest and highest selves.

A contemporary or near-future book is much harder because you can't fake the facts. There are people alive who know much more than you do about the subject. You have to really have your research together - and of course no one can know everything about a topic.

We must do our work for its own sake, not for fortune or attention or applause.

Those who will not govern themselves are condemned to find masters to govern over them.

A work-in-progress generates its own energy field. You, the artist or entrepreneur, are pouring love into the work; you are suffusing it with passion and intention and hope.

The problem I've always discovered in my own work when this kind of thing happens when you hit the wall is there's almost always a reason. You've almost always made a mistake in the initial conception of the project. You misapprehended something or you thought something would work and now you're three quarters on the way through and you see that it doesn't work.

Fear is good. Like self-doubt, fear is an indicator. Fear tells us what we have to do. Remember our rule of thumb: The more scared we are of a work or calling, the more sure we can be that we have to do it. Resistance is experienced as fear; the degree of fear equates to the strength of Resistance. Therefore the more fear we feel about a specific enterprise, the more certain we can be that that enterprise is important to us and to the growth of our soul. That's why we feel so much Resistance. If it meant nothing to us, there'd be no Resistance.

When we sit down day after day and keep grinding, something mysterious starts to happen... Unseen forces enlist in our cause; serendipity reinforces our purpose.

We’re all pros already. 1) We show up every day 2) We show up no matter what 3) We stay on the job all day 4) We are committed over the long haul 5) The stakes for us are high and real 6) We accept remuneration for our labor 7) We do not overidentify with our jobs 8 ) We master the technique of our jobs 9) We have a sense of humor about our jobs 10) We receive praise or blame in the real world

When a warrior fights not for himself, but for his brothers, when his most passionately sought goal is neither glory nor his own life's preservation, but to spend his substance for them, his comrades, not to abandon them, not to prove unworthy of them, then his heart truly has achieved contempt for death, and with that he transcends himself and his actions touch the sublime. That is why the true warrior cannot speak of battle save to his brothers who have been there with him. The truth is too holy, too sacred, for words." -Suicide (Gates of Fire)

Seeking support from friends and and family is like having people gathered around at your deathbed. It's nice, but when the ship sails, all they can do is stand on the dock waving goodbye.

Start before you’re ready.

Do you love your idea? Does it feel right on instinct? Are you willing to bleed for it?

Our job in this lifetime is not to shape ourselves into some ideal we imagine we ought to be, but to find out who we already are and become it. If we were born to paint, it’s our job to become a painter. If we were born to raise and nurture children, it’s our job to become a mother. If we were born to overthrow the order of ignorance and injustice of the world, it’s our job to realize it and get down to business.

One thing I've found in any project is almost universally about three quarters of the way through - or maybe a little father, maybe seventh eighths on the way through - any project will explode.

Courage is inseparable from love and leads to what may arguably be the noblest of all warrior virtues: selflessness.

To labor in the arts for any reason other than love is prostitution.

Be too dumb to quit and too stubborn to back off.

I love memoirs, particularly obscure ones because the writer is usually a regular guy just telling what happened to him and to his friends. What these tales lack in artfulness they make up for in passion and authenticity. For a writer of fiction, they are solid gold. I have stolen so much from memoirs it's ridiculous.

Ambition, I have come to believe, is the most primal and sacred and fundament of our being. To feel ambition and to act upon it is to embrace the unique calling of our souls. Not to act upon that ambition is to turn our backs on ourselves and on the reason for our existence.

A cavalryman's horse should be smarter than he is. But the horse must never be alowed to know this.

The best and only thing that one artist can do for another is to serve as an example and an inspiration.

Every artist has to face his own demons and evolve his own method of working.

Socrates demonstrated long ago, that the truly free individual is free only to the extent of his own self-mastery.

The professional arms himself with patience, not only to give the stars time to align in his career, but to keep himself from flaming out in each individual work.

Right now with blogs and the flood of internet access, a multitude of aspiring writers think they're ready for prime time. They're not. Be great. Read. Write. Bust your ass. Learn and find your voice. As hard as you think it is, it's a hundred times harder.

The more you love your art/ calling/ enterprise, the more important its accomplishment to the evolution of your soul, the more you will fear it and the more Resistance you will experience facing it.

The part we create from can't be touched by anything our parents did, or society did. That part is unsullied, uncorrupted; soundproof, waterproof, and bulletproof. In fact, the more troubles we've got, the better and richer that part becomes.

We feed it [Resistance] with power by our fear of it. Master that fear and we conquer Resistance.

The great thing about writing about the ancient Spartans or Athenians is that so much knowledge is no longer extant that no one, except maybe a Cambridge or Oxford don, can call you out and prove you wrong.

He who whets his steel, whets his courage

I believe in previous lives and the Muse—and that books and music exist before they are written and that they are propelled into material being by their own imperative to be born, via the offices of those willing servants of discipline, imagination and inspiration whom we call artists.

You know, Hitler wanted to be an artist. At eighteen he took his inheritance, seven hundred kronen, and moved to Vienna to live and study... Ever see one of his paintings? Neither have I. Resistance beat him. Call it overstatement but I'll say it anyway: it was easier for Hitler to start World War II than it was for him to face a blank square of canvas.

Like a magnetized needle floating on a surface of oil, Resistance will unfailingly point to true North--meaning that calling or action it most wants to stop us from doing. We can use this. We can use it as a compass. We can navigate by Resistance, letting it guide us to that calling or action that we must follow before all others. Rule of thumb: The more important a call or action is to our soul's evolution, the more Resistance we will feel toward pursuing it.

The Principle of Priority states (a) you must know the difference between what is urgent and what is important, and (b) you must do what’s important first.

Our job in this life is not to shape ourselves into some ideal we imagine we ought to be, but to find out who we already are and become it.

The professional learns to recognize envy-driven criticism and to take it for what it is: the supreme compliment. The critic hates most that which he would have done himself if he had had the guts.

The opposite of fear is love - love of the challenge, love of the work, the pure joyous passion to take a shot at our dream and see if we can pull it off.

There's a phrase you hear in Israel: "We're not Jews, we're Israelis." What that means is that the stereotype we're familiar with here in the States of the Diaspora Jew, i.e. Jews in America or Europe or Russia, etc. does not fit at all with the reality of the homegrown "sabras" of Israel.

This man has conquered the world! What have you done?" The philosopher replied without an instant's hesitation, "I have conquered the need to conquer the world.

The professional does not wait for inspiration; he acts in anticipation of it.

I'm superstitious. I keep mum while I'm working on something.

The amateur has a long list of fears. Near the top are two: Solitude and silence. The amateur fears solitude and silence because she needs to avoid, at all costs, the voice inside her head that would point her toward her calling and her destiny. So she seeks distraction. The amateur prizes shallowness and shuns depth. The culture of Twitter and Facebook is paradise for the amateur.

The critic hates most that which he would have done himself if he had had the guts.

The only intercourse possible between the knight and the dragon is battle.

Resistance really takes the shape, for me, in voices in my head telling me why I can't do something or why I should put it off for another day, procrastinate for another day.

The amateur believes he must first overcome his fear; then he can do his work. The professional knows that fear can never be overcome. He knows there is no such thing as a fearless warrior or a dread-free artist.

The Spartans say that any army may win while it still has legs under it; the real test comes when all strength is fled and the men must produce victory on will alone.

You are a writer when you tell yourself you are. No one else's opinion matters. Screw them. You are when you say you are.

Always attack. Even in defense, attack. The attacking arm possesses the initiative and thus commands the action. To attack makes men brave; to defend makes them timorous.

The most important thing about art is to work. Nothing else matters except sitting down every day and trying.

Rule of thumb: The more important a call or action is to our soul's evolution, the Resistance we will feel toward pursuing it.