Quotes from Steven Pressfield

Doctors estimate that seventy to eighty percent of their business is non-health-related. People aren't sick, they're self-dramatizing. Sometimes the hardest part of a medical job is keeping a straight face.

The enemy is in you, but it is not you.

There never was a moment, and never will be, when we are without the power to alter our destiny.

The Bhagavad-Gita tells us we have a right only to our labor, not to the fruits of our labor. All the warrior can give is his life; all the athlete can do is leave everything on the field.

Resistance is directly proportional to love. If you're feeling massive Resistance, the good news is, it means there's tremendous love there too. If you didn't love the project that is terrifying you, you wouldn't feel anything. The opposite of love isn't hate; it's indifference.

The professional dedicates himself to mastering technique not because he believes technique is a substitute for inspiration but because he wants to be in possession of the full arsenal of skills when inspiration does come. The professional is sly. He knows that by toiling beside the front door of technique, he leaves room for genius to enter by the back.

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.

The clash is epic and internal, between the ego and the Self, and the stakes are our lives.

What husband is he who abandons his wife? What wife is she taken without love? The gods demand of us action and the use of our free will! That is piety, not to buckle beneath necessity's yoke like dumb beasts!

Someone once asked Somerset Maugham 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.

It's only you and I, with our big brains and our tiny hearts, who doubt and overthink and hesitate.

When we raise our game aesthetically, we elevate it morally and spiritually as well.

The pain of being human is that we're all angels imprisoned in vessels of flesh.

The children who were able to sit for three minutes with a marshmallow on the table in front of them without eating it were rewarded with two marshmallows when the experimenter returned. But that's as crazy as inbox-watching. Krishna said we have the right to our labor, but not to the fruits of our labor. He meant that the piano is its own reward, as is the canvas, the barre, and the movieola. Fuck the marshmallows.

A king does not expend his substance to enslave men, but by his conduct and example makes them free.

I can procrastinate thinking about my procrastination problem. I can procrastinate dealing with my problem of procrastinating thinking about my procrastination problem.

Resistance is experienced as fear; the degree of fear equates to the strength of Resistance. Therefore the more fear we feel about a specific enterprise, the more certain we can be that that enterprise is important to us and to the growth of our soul. That's why we feel so much Resistance. If it meant nothing to us, there'd be no Resistance.

Instead of applying self-knowledge, self-discipline, delayed gratification and hard work, we simply consume a product.

There's no mystery to turning pro. It's a decision brought about by an act of will.

The rancor I once bore recedes, supplanted by admiration and a sense even of loss at the mates we might have been and the times we might have shared.

Some heavy shit is coming down, brothers, and we're going to go through it.

Indeed, we own a bond, my friend. That most sublime of all: reminiscence for our vanished youth.

What could be more natural for this man than to draw to his bosom all with whom he shared that time, even his foes? Perhaps his foes more than any.

When inspiration touches talent, she gives birth to truth and beauty.