Steven Pressfield
The Gnostics believed that exile was the essential condition of man. Do you agree? I do. The artist and the addict both wrestle with this experience of exile. They share an acute, even excruciating sensitivity to the state of separation and isolation, and both actively seek a way to overcome it, to transcend it, or at least to make the pain go away. What is the pain of being human? It's the condition of being suspended between two worlds and being unable to fully enter into either.Collection: Pain
On the artist's journey we are redefining and reconfiguring ourselves and our lives.Collection: Artist
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.Collection: Artist
I am going to write my symphony; I'm just going to start tomorrow.Collection: Writing
Resistance’s goal is not to wound or disable. Resistance aims to killCollection: Goal
Start before you’re ready. Good things happen when we start before we’re ready.Collection: Good Things
...she (the artist, the writer) doesn't wait for inspiration, she acts in the anticipation of its apparition.Collection: Inspiration
The athlete knows the day will never come when he wakes up pain-free. He has to play hurt.Collection: Hurt
Have you ever wondered why the slang terms for intoxication are so demolition-oriented? Stoned, smashed, hammered. It's because they're talking about the Ego. It's the Ego that gets blasted, waxed, plastered.Collection: Talking
It is a commonplace among artists and children at play that they're not aware of time or solitude while they're chasing their vision. The hours fly. The sculptress and the tree-climbing tyke both look up blinking when Mom calls, 'Suppertime!'Collection: Mom
A horse must be a bit mad to be a good cavalry mount, and its rider must be completely so.Collection: Horse
Its [Resistance] aim is to shove us away, distract us from doing our work.Collection: Resistance
For what can be more noble than to slay oneself? Not literally. Not with a blade in the guts. But to extinguish the selfish self within, that part which looks only to its own preservation, to save its own skin. That, I saw, was the victory you Spartans had gained over yourselves. That was the glue. It was what you had learned and it made me stay, to learn it too.Collection: Selfish
I had always been an enthusiastic reader of stuff about ancient Greece. I would read Herodotus and Thucydides just for fun.Collection: Fun
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.Collection: Book
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."Collection: Drama
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.Collection: Writing
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.Collection: Writing
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.Collection: Mean
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.Collection: Father
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.Collection: Wall
Traditional publishers will be dominant, and they should be because they really do assure quality. But eBooks, which are huge already, are going to eclipse everything. They will save traditional publishing the way DVDs saved movie studios (for a while) and they'll greatly expand the number of readers.Collection: Numbers
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.Collection: Reading
I'm superstitious. I keep mum while I'm working on something.Collection: Mum
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.Collection: Self
These are not easy questions. Who am I? Why am I here? They're not easy because the human being isn't wired to function as an individual.Collection: Easy
Evolution has programmed us to feel rejection in our guts. This is how the tribe inforced obedience, by wielding the threat of expulsion. Fear of rejection isn't just psychological; it's biological. It's in our cells.Collection: Cells
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.Collection: Betrayal
The artist and the fundamentalist both confront the same issue, the mystery of their existence as individuals.Collection: Artist
Persian envoy "our arrows will black out the sun..." Dienekes of the Spartans.."Good, then we'll fight in the shade.Collection: Fighting
The artist must be like that Marine. He has to know how to be miserable. He has to love being miserable. He has to take pride in being more miserable than any soldier or swabbie or jet jockey. Because this is war, baby. And war is hell.Collection: Baby
Artists are modest. They know they're not doing the work; they're just taking dictation.Collection: Artist
The hero wanders, the hero suffers, the hero returns. You are that hero.Collection: Hero
These scars on my body,” Alexander declared, “were got for you, my brothers. Every wound, as you see, is in the front. Let that man stand forth from your ranks who has bled more than I, or endured more than I for your sake. Show him to me, and I will yield to your weariness and go home.” Not a man came forward. Instead, a great cheer arose from the army. The men begged their king to forgive them for their want of spirit and pleaded with him only to lead them forward.Collection: Brother
This is the other secret that real artists know and wannabe writers don’t. When we sit down each day and do our work, power concentrates around us. The Muse takes note of our dedication. She approves. We have earned favor in her sight. When we sit down and work, we become like a magnetized rod that attracts iron filings. Ideas come. Insights accrete.Collection: Real
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.Collection: Hurt
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.Collection: Morning
You don't need to take a course or buy a product. All you have to do is change your mind.Collection: Mind
No industry is immune and no occupation is safe. All of us need to begin to think in terms of our own inner strengths, our resilience and resourcefulness, our capacity to adapt and to rely upon ourselves and our families.Collection: Thinking
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.Collection: Morning
What force is yanking at our sleeves? This process of self-revision and self-correction is so common we don't even notice. But it's a miracle.Collection: Self
The professional is acutely aware of the intangibles that go into inspiration. Out of respect for them, she lets them work. She grants them their sphere while she concentrates on hers.Collection: Inspiration
Resistance is implacable, intractable, indefatigable.Collection: Resistance
Anything that draws attention to ourselves through pain-free or artificial means is a manifestation of Resistance.Collection: Pain
A writer writes with his genius; an artist paints with hers; everyone who creates operates from this sacramental center.Collection: Writing
The instinct that pulls us toward art is the impulse to evolve, to learn, to heighten and elevate our consciousness. The Ego hates this. Because the more awake we become, the less we need the Ego.Collection: Art
The awakening an artist must be ruthless, not only with herself but with others.Collection: Artist
To feel ambition and to act upon it is to embrace the unique calling of our souls.Collection: Ambition
The professional loves her work. She is invested in it wholeheartedly. But she does not forget that the work is not her.Collection: Doe