Look in your own heart. Unless I'm crazy, right now a still small voice is piping up, telling you as it has ten thousand times, the calling that is yours and yours alone. You know it. No one has to tell you. And unless I'm crazy, you're no closer to taking action on it than you were yesterday or will be tomorrow. You think Resistance isn't real? Resistance will bury you.

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."

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

I wrote in the War of Art that I could divide my life neatly into two parts: before turning pro and after. After is better.

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.

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

The professional respects his craft. He does not consider himself superior to it. He recognizes the contributions of those who have gone before him. He apprentices himself to them.