There’s a secret that real writers know that wannabe writers don’t, and the secret is this: It’s not the writing part that’s hard. What’s hard is sitting down to write. What keeps us from sitting down is Resistance.
STEVEN PRESSFIELDIf you were meant to cure cancer or write a symphony 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.
More Steven Pressfield Quotes
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The professional tackles the project that will make him stretch. He takes on the assignment that will bear him into uncharted waters, compel him to explore unconscious parts of himself. Is he scared? Hell, yes. He’s petrified.
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We come into this world with a specific, personal destiny. We have a job to do, a calling to enact, a self to become. We are who we are from the cradle, and we’re stuck with it.
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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.
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The artist cannot look to others to validate his efforts or his calling. If you don’t believe me, ask Van Gogh, who produced masterpiece after masterpiece and never found a buyer in his whole life.
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A cavalryman’s horse should be smarter than he is. But the horse must never be allowed to know this.
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The best and only thing that one artist can do for another is to serve as an example and an inspiration.
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Every sun casts a shadow, and genius’s shadow is Resistance.
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Never forget: This very moment, we can change our lives. There never was a moment, and never will be, when we are without the power to alter our destiny.
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The Spartans say that any army may win while it still has legs under it; the real test comes when all strength is fled and the men must produce victory on will alone.
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Figure out what scares you the most and do that first.
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The most important thing about art is to work. Nothing else matters except sitting down every day and trying.
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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.
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Playing the game for money produces the proper professional attitude. It inculcates the lunch-pail state of mind that shows up for work despite rain or snow or dark of night and slugs it out day after day.
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Always attack. Even in defense, attack. The attacking arm possesses the initiative and thus commands the action. To attack makes men brave; to defend makes them timorous.
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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.
STEVEN PRESSFIELD






