Steven Pressfield Quotes

The amateur tweets. The pro works.

Art is a war - between ourselves and the forces of self-sabotage that would stop us from doing our work. The artist is a warrior.

You have never tasted freedom, friend, or you would know it is purchased not with gold, but steel.

Reading is alive and well and will get more alive and more well. Reading on tablets (or whatever the next tech device will be) is the future - and the future is now.

The Kabbalah describes angels as bundles of light, meaning intelligence, consciousness. Kabbalists believe that above every blade of grass is an angel crying "Grow! Grow!" ... I believe that above the entire human race is one super-angel, crying "Evolve! Evolve!"

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

Resistance is greatest just before the finish line.

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

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

Are you paralyzed with fear? That’s a good sign. Fear is good. Like self-doubt, fear is an indicator. Fear tells us what we have to do. Remember one 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.

Picasso painted with passion, Mozart composed with it. A child plays with it all day long. You may think you’ve lost your passion, or that you can’t identify it, or that you have so much of it, it threatens to overwhelm you. None of these is true.

I was keenly conscious of the comrades-in-arms who had fallen with me. A bond surpassing by a hundredfold that which I had known in life bound me to them. I felt a sense of inexpressible relief and realized that I had feared, more than death, separation from them. I apprehended that excruciating war survivor's torment, the sense of isolation and self-betrayal experienced by those who had elected to cling yet to breath when their comrades had let loose their grip.

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.

Don't prepare. Begin. Our enemy is not lack of preparation. The enemy is resistance, our chattering brain producing excuses. Start before you are ready.

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)

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

A child has no trouble believing the unbelievable, nor does the genius or the madman. It’s only you and I, with our big brains and our tiny hearts, who doubt and overthink and hesitate.

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

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.

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.

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

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

Resistance is implacable, intractable, indefatigable.

Put your ass where your heart wants to be.

Don't cheat the world of your contribution. Give it what you've got.

We will have to choose between the life we want for our future and the life we have left behind.

Resistance in my experience always kicks in when you're trying to move from a lower level to a higher level or to identify with a braver part of yourself or your higher nature. So it's that negative repelling force. It's kind of the dragon that we have to slay every day if we're artists or entrepreneurs.

A horse must be a bit mad to be a good cavalry mount, and its rider must be completely so.

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.

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.

If you were meant to cure cancer or crack cold fusion and you don't do it, you not only hurt yourself, even destroy yourself. You hurt your children, you hurt me, you hurt the planet. You shame the angels who watch over you and you spite God Almighty, who created you and only you with your unique gifts, for the sole purpose of nudging the human race one millimeter further along its path back to God.

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.

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.

It’s not the writing part that’s hard. What’s hard is sitting down to write.

To feel ambition and to act upon it is to embrace the unique calling of our souls.

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.

Defeating Resistance is like giving birth. It seems absolutely impossible until you remember that women have been pulling it off successfully, with support and without, for fifty million years.

Many pedestrians have been maimed or killed at the intersection of Resistance and Commerce.

Stay stupid. Follow your unconventional crazy heart.

Is there a spiritual element to creativity? Hell, yes. Our mightiest ally (our indispensable ally) is belief in something we cannot see, hear, touch, taste, or feel.

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

The artist and the mother are vehicles, not originators. They don't create the new life, they only bear it. This is why birth is such a humbling experience. The new mom weeps in awe at the little miracle in her arms. She knows it came out of her but not from her, through her but not of her.

Long-term, we must begin to build our internal strengths. It isn't just skills like computer technology. It's the old-fashioned basics of self-reliance, self-motivation, self-reinforcement, self-discipline, self-command.

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

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.

The sign of the amateur is overglorification of and preoccupation with the mystery. The professional shuts up. She doesn't talk about it. She does her work.

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.

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