Quotes from Steven Pressfield

Whatever you can do, or dream you can, begin it. Boldness has genius, magic, and power in it. Begin it now."   —W. H. Murray, The Scottish Himalayan Expedition

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.

the man who really loves his country is not the one who refuses to attack it when he has been unjustly driven from it, but the man whose desire for it is so strong that he will shrink from nothing in his efforts to get back there again.

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.

If you take Resistance at its word, you deserve everything you get. Resistance is always lying and always full of shit.

While those who will not govern themselves are condemned to find masters to govern over them.

We master the technique of our jobs.

The awakening artist must be ruthless, not only with herself but with others. Once you make your break, you can't turn around for your buddy who catches his trouser leg on the barbed wire. The best thing you can do for that friend (and he'd tell you this himself, if he really is your friend) is to get over the wall and keep motating.

the Spartan right fall upon the defenders of Antirhion, not in frenzied shrieking rage, lip-curled and fang-bared, but predator-like, cold-blooded, applying the steel with the wordless cohesion of the killing pack and the homicidal efficiency of the hunt.

Give the act to me. Purged of hope and ego, Fix your attention on the soul. Act and do for me.

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

THE ARTIST'S LIFE Are you a born writer?

Why have I stressed professionalism so heavily? Because the most important thing about art is to work. Nothing else matters except sitting down every day and trying.

Fear saps passion.

any act that derives from our higher nature instead of our lower. Any of these acts will elicit Resistance.

The hero wanders. The hero suffers. The hero returns.

The writer is an infantryman. He knows that progress is measured in yards of dirt extracted from the enemy one day, one hour, one minute at a time and paid for in blood. The artist wears combat boots. He looks in the mirror and sees GI Joe. Remember, the Muse favors working stiffs. She hates prima donnas. To the gods the supreme sin is not rape or murder, but pride.

The hack is like the politician who consults the polls before he takes a position. He's a demagogue. He panders. It can pay off, being a hack. Given the depraved state of American culture, a slick dude can make millions being a hack. But even if you succeed, you lose, because you've sold out your Muse, and your Muse is you, the best part of yourself, where your finest and only true work comes from. I

Those who do not understand war believe it contention between armies, friend against foe. No. Rather friend and foe duel as one against an unseen antagonist, whose name is Fear, and seek, even entwined in death, to mount to that promontory whose ensign is honor.

The professional knows that Resistance is like a telemarketer; if you so much as say hello, you're finished.

I'm imagining the reader, whom I conjure as an aspiring artist much like my own younger, less grizzled self, to whom I hope to impart a little starch and inspiration and prime, a little, with some hard-knocks wisdom and a few tricks of the trade.

We slew three hundred of them," replied Artemisia, "and it took two million of us to do it." These

How many of us have become drunks and drug addicts, developed tumors and neuroses, succumbed to pain killers, gossip, and compulsive cell phone use, simply because we don't do that thing that our hearts, our inner genius, is calling us to?

We get ourselves in trouble because it's a cheap way to get attention. Trouble is a faux form of fame.