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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.

Steven Pressfield

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

Blood Feeling Ideas Inspirational Love Right Yourself
The professional does not wait for inspiration; he acts in anticipation of it.
STEVEN PRESSFIELD

Act Himself Inspirational Professional Wait
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

Brain Enemy Preparation Production Resistance Start Yourself
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

Attitude Day Game Mindset Night Play Production Professional
Don’t prepare, do. Don’t let Resistance sucker you into wasting months on background, foundation, planning. All that can come later.
STEVEN PRESSFIELD

Foundation Preparation Resistance Wasted Time
The best and only thing that one artist can do for another is to serve as an example and an inspiration.
STEVEN PRESSFIELD

Artist Best Inspirational Service
In my experience, depth of work consists of two components. The first is recklessness; the second is discipline.
STEVEN PRESSFIELD

Death Discipline Experience Work
Be too dumb to quit and too stubborn to back off.
STEVEN PRESSFIELD

Attitude Inspirational Quit Stubborn Success
Figure out what scares you the most and do that first.
STEVEN PRESSFIELD

Act Brave Fear Inspirational Scare Yourself
Resistance cannot be seen, touched, heard, or smelled. But it can be felt. We experince it as an energy field radiating from a work-in-potential… Its aim is to shove us away, distract us, prevent us from doing our work.
STEVEN PRESSFIELD

Feeling Ourselves Potential Resistance See Touch Work
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.
STEVEN PRESSFIELD

Exploration Himself Professional Project Water
Courage is inseparable from love and leads to what may arguably be the noblest of all warrior virtues: selflessness.
STEVEN PRESSFIELD

Argue Courage Separate Virtue Warrior
The most important thing about art is to work. Nothing else matters except sitting down every day and trying.
STEVEN PRESSFIELD

Art Day Exception Important Try Work
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.
STEVEN PRESSFIELD

Believe Big Children Doubt Heart Hesitation Mad Man Myself Thinking Trouble
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

Born Defeat Impossible Resistance Success Support Time
When we turn pro we stop running from our fears. We turn around and face them.
STEVEN PRESSFIELD

Face Fears Run Stop

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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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.

Related Topics

Popular Authors

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