Quotes from Steven Pressfield

She is a wide bed who holds both democracy and empire

Self-doubt can be an ally. This is because it serves as an indicator of aspiration. It reflects love, love of something we dream of doing, and desire, desire to do it. If you find yourself asking yourself (and your friends), Am I really a writer? Am I really an artist? chances are you are.

What will keep us from stopping? Plain old stubbornness.

Here's what I think. I think angels make their home in the Self, while Resistance has its seat in the Ego. The fight is between the two. The Self wishes to create, to evolve. The Ego likes things just the way they are.

Resistance cannot be seen, touched, heard, or smelled. But it can be felt. We experience it as an energy field radiating from a work-in-potential. It's a repelling force. It's negative. Its aim is to shove us away, distract us, prevent us from doing our work.

I believe with unshakeable faith that there will always be something in the box.

Courage is inseparable from love and leads to what may arguably be the noblest of all warrior virtues: selflessness.

All beings are one. If I hurt you, I hurt myself.

Only two things will remain with us across the river: our inhering genius and the hearts we love.

We humans have territories too. Ours are psychological. Stevie Wonder's territory is the piano. Arnold Schwarzenegger's is the gym. When Bill Gates pulls into the parking lot at Microsoft, he's on his territory. When I sit down to write, I'm on mine.

Remember, our enemy is not lack of preparation; it's not the difficulty of the project or the state of the marketplace or the emptiness of our bank account.

TERRITORY VERSUS HIERARCHY In the animal kingdom, individuals define themselves in one of two ways — by their rank within a hierarchy (a hen in a pecking order, a wolf in a pack) or by their connection to a territory (a home base, a hunting ground, a turf).

What Westerners call corruption is just life in 75% of the world. Americans still don't understand this. We think the rest of the planet is like us, or would be if it had the same advantages. We live in a bubble in the States. We make decisions and establish policy based on dream conceptions of the wider universe. We think everyone is the same as we are. We think they want the same things we want. They don't. They're not like us at all.

Who walks his path beside me Feels my hand upon him always. No effort he makes is wasted, Nor unseen, unguided by me.

Resistance is like the Alien or the Terminator or the shark in Jaws. It cannot be reasoned with. It understands nothing but power. It is an engine of destruction, programmed from the factory with one object only: to prevent us from doing our work. Resistance is implacable, intractable, indefatigable. Reduce it to a single cell and that cell will continue to attack. This is Resistance's nature. It's all it knows.

Arabs lie. Let me tell you this, Gent, if you don't know it already. We lie for fun, we lie for profit, we lie all the time, and we don't even know why.

Fear is good. Like self-doubt, fear is an indicator. Fear tells us what we have to do. Remember our rule of thumb: The more scared we are of a work or calling, the more sure we can be that we have to do it.

Start before you're ready. Good things happen when we start before we're ready. For one thing, we show huevos. Our blood heats up. Courage begets more courage. The gods, witnessing our boldness, look on in approval.

Remember, the Muse favors working stiffs. She hates prima donnas. To the gods the supreme sin is not rape or murder, but pride. To think of yourself as a mercenary, a gun for hire, implants the proper humility.

Start playing from power. We can always dial it back later. If we don't swing for the seats from the start, we'll never be able to drive a fastball into the upper deck.

the truly free individual is free only to the extent of his own self-mastery. While those who will not govern themselves are condemned to find masters to govern over them.

What I call Professionalism someone else might call the Artist's Code or the Warrior's Way. It's an attitude of egolessness and service. The Knights of the Round Table were chaste and self-effacing. Yet they dueled dragons.

Fuck the marshmallows.

A Jew asks over and over, "What is fair? What is just? Who is a good man, and why?