The most important thing about art is to work. Nothing else matters except sitting down every day and trying.
STEVEN PRESSFIELDThe 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.
More Steven Pressfield Quotes
-
-
We feed it [Resistance] with power by our fear of it. Master that fear and we conquer Resistance.
STEVEN PRESSFIELD -
A cavalryman’s horse should be smarter than he is. But the horse must never be allowed to know this.
STEVEN PRESSFIELD -
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.
STEVEN PRESSFIELD -
Seeking support from friends and and family is like having people gathered around at your deathbed. It’s nice, but when the ship sails, all they can do is stand on the dock waving goodbye.
STEVEN PRESSFIELD -
To yield to Resistance deforms our spirit. It stunts us and makes us less than we are and were born to be.
STEVEN PRESSFIELD -
The professional loves her work. She is invested in it wholeheartedly. But she does not forget that the work is not her.
STEVEN PRESSFIELD -
In my experience, depth of work consists of two components. The first is recklessness; the second is discipline.
STEVEN PRESSFIELD -
Creative work is not a selfish act or a bid for attention on the part of the actor. It’s a gift to the world and every being in it. Don’t cheat us of your contribution. Give us what you’ve got.
STEVEN PRESSFIELD -
The professional will not tolerate disorder… He wants the carpet vacuumed and the threshold swept, so the Muse may enter and not soil her gown.
STEVEN PRESSFIELD -
Resistance by definition is self-sabotage.
STEVEN PRESSFIELD -
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.
STEVEN PRESSFIELD -
Stay stupid. Follow your unconventional crazy heart.
STEVEN PRESSFIELD -
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.
STEVEN PRESSFIELD -
Figure out what scares you the most and do that first.
STEVEN PRESSFIELD -
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.
STEVEN PRESSFIELD -
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.
STEVEN PRESSFIELD -
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.
STEVEN PRESSFIELD -
Research can become Resistance. We want to work, not prepare to work.
STEVEN PRESSFIELD -
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.
STEVEN PRESSFIELD -
We will have to choose between the life we want for our future and the life we have left behind.
STEVEN PRESSFIELD -
If 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.
STEVEN PRESSFIELD -
Resistance is not a peripheral opponent. Resistance arises from within. It is self-generated and self-perpetuated. resistance is the enemy within.
STEVEN PRESSFIELD -
The more scared we are of a work or calling, the more sure we can be that we have to do it.
STEVEN PRESSFIELD -
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 PRESSFIELD -
Slay that dragon once, and he will never have power over you again.
STEVEN PRESSFIELD -
Our greatest battle is to become ourselves, in the face of adversity.
STEVEN PRESSFIELD