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

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

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.

Next morning I went over to Paul’s for coffee and told him I had finished. “Good for you,” he said without looking up. “Start the next one today.

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.

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)

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.