Quotes from Steven Pressfield

Resistance outwits the amateur with the oldest trick in the book: It uses his own enthusiasm against him.

You're where you wanted to be, aren't you? So you're taking a few blows. That's the price for being in the arena and not on the sidelines. Stop complaining and be grateful. That

The inner critic? His ass is not permitted in the building. Set forth without fear and without self-censorship. When you hear that voice in your head, blow it off. This draft is not being graded. There will be no pop quiz.

The amateur has not mastered the technique of his art. Nor does he expose himself to judgment in the real world. If we show our poem to our friend and our friend says, It's wonderful, I love it, that's not real-world feedback, that's our friend being nice to us. Nothing is as empowering as real- world validation, even if it's for failure.

The professional knows that Resistance is like a telemarketer; if you so much as say hello, you're finished. The pro doesn't even pick up the phone. He stays at work.

Only one thing matters in this initial draft: get SOMETHING done, however flawed or imperfect.

the Muse favors working stiffs. She hates prima donnas.

Suspending self-judgment doesn't just mean blowing off the "You suck" voice in our heads. It also means liberating ourselves from conventional expectations—from what we think our work "ought" to be or "should" look like.

And as for the wheel you speak of,' my master finished, 'like every other, it turns both ways.

Stay stupid. Follow your unconventional, crazy heart. If your notion violates every precept I've set forth in these pages, tell me to go to hell. Do what that voice says.

Ideas come according to their own logic. That logic is not rational. It's not linear. We may get the middle before we get the end. We may get the end before we get the beginning. Be ready for this. Don't resist it.

Remember, the part of us that we imagine needs healing is not the part we create from; that part is far deeper and stronger. The part we create from can't be touched by anything our parents did, or society did. That part is unsullied, uncorrupted; soundproof, waterproof, and bulletproof. In fact, the more troubles we've got, the better and richer that part becomes.

swear to you, friends, by all the gods, he seems to me happier in doing us kindnesses than in enriching himself.

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

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.

In writing, "action" means putting words on paper. "Reflection" means evaluating what we have on paper.

No matter what a writer or artist may tell you, they have no clue what they're doing before they do it—and, for the most part, while they're doing it.

I don't need to read nothing,' said the New Zealander. 'I was there.

It may be that the human race is not ready for freedom. The air of liberty may be too rarefied for us to breathe. […] The paradox seems to be, as Socrates demonstrated long ago, that 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.

In frontline dressing stations, wounded men of Axis and Allied armies often received treatment side by side, on no few occasions from German and British medical officers working shoulder to shoulder. The leading exemplar of this code was Rommel himself. When orders from Hitler mandated the execution of captured British commandos, Rommel tossed the document into the trash.

The habits and addictions of the amateur are conscious or unconscious self-inflicted wounds. Their payoff is incapacity. When we take our M1903 Springfield and blow a hole in our foot, we no longer have to face the real fight of our lives, which is to become who we are and to realize our destiny and our calling.

Now the brave man. In dark hours he endures silently, uncomplaining. Reverencing the round of heaven's seasons, he does what must be done, sustaining himself with the certainty that to endure injustice with patience is the mark of piety and wisdom.

Our birth is but a sleep and a forgetting: The soul that rises with us, our life's star, Hath had elsewhere its setting, And cometh from afar: Not in entire forgetfulness, And not in utter nakedness, But trailing clouds of glory do we come, From God who is our home.

Resistance will unfailingly point to true north. The action it most wants us to stop, we can let resistance use to guide us. The more important, the more resistance.