Quotes from Steven Pressfield

The power to take charge was in my hands; all I had to do was believe it.

It is one thing to study war and another to live the warrior's life.   —Telamon of Arcadia, mercenary of the fifth century B.C.

Do it or don't do it.

When I sit down to write in the morning, I literally have no expectations for myself or for the day's work. My only goal is to put in three or four hours with my fingers punching the keys. I don't judge myself on quality. I don't hold myself accountable for quantity. The only questions I ask are, Did I show up? Did I try my best?

A professional does not take success or failure personally.

preparation, order, patience, endurance, acting in the face of fear and failure

Our team has zero; has he got Close Air Support, drones, anything?

When we experience panic, it means that we're about to cross a threshold. We're poised on the doorstep of a higher plane.

talent: the innate power to discover the hidden connection between two things — images, ideas, words — that no one else has ever seen before, link them, and create for the world a third, utterly unique work.

it. If you find yourself asking yourself (and your friends), Am I really a writer? Am I really an artist? chances are you are.

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.

Who are these pilots anyway? They get the best of everything; their demands eat up the defense budget. Can we count on them? What do they do except wear Ray-Bans and eat steaks and go home each night to sleep on clean sheets?

Even a blind squirrel finds an acorn every once in a while.

It is one thing to study war and another to live the warrior's life.

The most highly cultured mother gives birth sweating and dislocated and cursing like a sailor. That's the place we inhabit as artists and innovators. It's the place we must become comfortable with.

I must carry on—for my mates, for England, for Rose and for our child. The alternative is unthinkable. With this, I understand the perverse logic of war and the true tragedy of armed conflict. The enemy against whom we fight are human beings like ourselves, individuals with whom each of us might have been friends except for the deranged fictions of nation, doctrine, race and religion, and whom now we must murder (as they seek to murder us) in the name of those very same fictions.

Remember, the Muse favors working stiffs. She hates prima donnas. To the gods the supreme sin is not rape or murder, but pride.

Because the most important thing about art is to work. Nothing else matters except sitting down every day and trying.

NO MYSTERY There's no mystery to turning pro. It's a decision brought about by an act of will. We make up our minds to view ourselves as pros and we do it. Simple as that.

These characters might not be interesting to anyone else but they're absolutely fascinating to us. They are us. Meaner, smarter, sexier versions of ourselves. It's fun to be with them because they're wrestling with the same issue that has its hooks into us. They're our soul mates, our lovers, our best friends. Even the villains. Especially the villains.

Resistance is diabolical. It can harness our drive for greatness and our instinct for professionalism and yoke them, instead, to a shadow profession, whose demands will keep us from turning our energies toward their true course.

When we drug ourselves to blot out our soul's call, we are being good Americans and exemplary consumers. We're doing exactly what TV commercials and pop materialist culture have been brainwashing us to do from birth.

I, on the other hand, believe that the source of creativity is found on the same plane of reality as Resistance.

Men feared even the shade of Alexander, lest they encounter him again beneath the earth, for surely in that world, too, none would surpass him.