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

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.

When we see others beginning to live their authentic selves, it drives us crazy if we have not lived out our own.

The most pernicious aspect of procrastination is that it can become a habit. We don’t just put off our lives today; we put them off till our deathbed.

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.

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.

Ignorance and arrogance are the artist’s and entrepreneur’s indispensable allies. She must be clueless enough to have no idea how difficult her enterprise is going to be and cocky enough to believe she can pull it off anyway.”

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.

Resistance by definition is self-sabotage.

What finally convinced me to go ahead was simply that I was so unhappy not going ahead.

The amateur tweets. The pro works.

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

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.

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.

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

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

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

Family is not who’s blood is in you, is who you love and who loves you.

The heart has no tears to give,–it drops only blood, bleeding itself away in silence.

Shame bleeds through generation to generation. That is not the legacy I wish for you.

Misery doesn’t love just any company it desires the kind presence only loneliness feeds but that’s not love at all. – love doesn’t eat it bleeds.

I woke up with the warrior in my blood.

It’s in my genes. My mother was an opera singer. I’m clearly dramatic.

Negro blood is sure powerful, because just one drop of black blood makes a colored man. One drop–you are a Negro! . . . Black is powerful.

I am quite certain that the crimes of this guilty land will never be purged away but with blood. I had, as I now think vainly, flattered myself that without very much bloodshed it might be done.