Quotes from Steven Pressfield

silent (and not-so-silent) threat.

the Invocation of the Muse from Homer's Odyssey, the T. E. Lawrence translation.

Resistance also told me I shouldn't seek to instruct, or put myself forward as a purveyor of wisdom; that this was vain, egotistical, possibly even corrupt, and that it would work harm to me in the end. That scared me. It made a lot of sense.

Act, Junah, but act without attachment, as the earth does. As I do. The rain falls, with no thought of watering the land. The clouds roll, not seeking to bring shade. They simply do. And we must too.

Instead let's ask ourselves like that new mother: What do I feel growing inside me? Let me bring that forth, if I can, for its own sake and not for what it can do for me or how it can advance my standing.

Turning pro is like kicking a drug habit or stopping drinking. It's a decision, a decision to which we must re-commit every day. Each day, the professional understands, he will wake up facing the same demons, the same Resistance, the same self-sabotage…The difference is that now he will not yield to those temptations. He will have mastered them, and he will continue to master them.

Remember, as artists we don't know diddly. We're winging it every day. For us to try to second-guess our Muse the way a hack second-guesses his audience is condescension to heaven. It's blasphemy and sacrilege.

The professional learns to recognize envy-driven criticism and to take it for what it is: the supreme compliment.

When we commit fully to our calling, we acknowledge the forces of inspiration that we hope to summon to our aid.

The soap and sponge were doing their thing.

Defeating Resistance is like giving birth. It seems absolutely impossible until you remember that women have been pulling it off successfully, with support and without, for fifty million years.

There is no other time. Today is the Superbowl. Today is the day I give birth. Today is the day I die.

Know that all that is," Bagger Vance's voice came again as if in a dream, "flows from the union of the Field and the Knower.

Work—day-in, day-out exertion and concentration—produces progress and order. That's a law of the universe.

I have learned a deep respect for one of Goethe's couplets: "Whatever you can do, or dream you can, begin it. Boldness has genius, magic, and power in it. Begin it now.

The professional shuts up. She doesn't talk about it. She does her work.

Boldness has genius, magic, and power in it. Begin it now.

The field is level, the professional understands, only in heaven.

Attention Deficit Disorder, Seasonal Affect Disorder, Social Anxiety Disorder. These aren't diseases, they're marketing ploys.

The year after Thermopylae, the Greek fleet and army threw back the Persian multitudes at Salamis and Plataea. The West survived then, in no small measure because of her women.

He who whets his steel, whets his courage.

This doesn't mean that the professional doesn't throw down a 360 tomahawk jam from time to time, just to let the boys know he's still in business.

I don't know what you're writing, Steve. I don't want to know. I'll never read it. I'll never judge it. All I ask of it, and of you, is that it come from that sacred space inside you and that it stay true, as you write it, to the ideals of that hallowed precinct.

Creative work is not a selfish act or a bid for attention on the part of the actor. It's a gift to the world and every being in it. Don't cheat us of your contribution. Give us what you've got.