Quotes from Steven Pressfield

The amateur tweets. The pro works.

The artist must be like that Marine. He has to know how to be miserable. He has to love being miserable.

Fame Imperishable and glory that will never die -- that is what we march for!

Most of us have two lives. The life we live, and the unlived life within us.

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.

Better to be in the arena getting stomped by the bulls, than to be up in the stands or out in the parking lot.

Do we have to stare death in the face to make us stand up and confront Resistance?

What's the difference between a Spartan king and a mid-ranker? One man will lob this query to his mate as they prepare to bed down in the open in a cold driving rain. His friend considers mock-theatrically for a moment. .'The king sleeps in that shithole over there' he replies. 'We sleep in this shithole over here.

The awakening an artist must be ruthless, not only with herself but with others.

Warfare is theatre, I have said, and the essence of theatre is aritifce. What we show, we will not do. What we don't show, we will do.

My wish for you, Kallistos, is that you survive as many battles in the flesh as you have already fought in your imagination. Perhaps then you will acquire the humility of a man and bear yourself no longer as the demigod you presume yourself to be.

If you find yourself criticizing other people, you're probably doing it out of Resistance. When we see others beginning to live their authentic selves, it drives us crazy if we have not lived out our own.

Here is what you do, friends. Forget country. Forget king. Forget wife and children and freedom. Forget every concept, however noble, that you imagine you fight for here today. Act for this alone: for the man who stands at your shoulder. He is everything, and everything is contained within him. That is all I know. That is all I can tell you. --Dienekes at Thermopylae

Let us be, then, warriors of the heart, and enlist in our inner cause the virtues we have acquired through blood and sweat in the sphere of conflict—courage, patience, selflessness, loyalty, fidelity, self-command, respect for elders, love of our comrades (and of the enemy), perseverance, cheerfulness in adversity and a sense of humor, however terse or dark.

Its [Resistance] aim is to shove us away, distract us from doing our work.

He is prepared, each day, to confront his own self-sabotage.

Resistance has no conscience.

These scars on my body," Alexander declared, "were got for you, my brothers. Every wound, as you see, is in the front. Let that man stand forth from your ranks who has bled more than I, or endured more than I for your sake. Show him to me, and I will yield to your weariness and go home." Not a man came forward. Instead, a great cheer arose from the army. The men begged their king to forgive them for their want of spirit and pleaded with him only to lead them forward.

You may think that you've lost your passion, or that you can't identify it, or that you have so much of it, it threatens to overwhelm you. None of these is true. Fear saps passion. When we conquer our fears, we discover a boundless, bottomless, inexhaustible well of passion.

Cousin, the days of gods and heroes are over. Not to me. Not to them.

Ambition, I have come to believe, is the most primal and sacred fundament of our being. To feel ambition and to act upon it is to embrace the unique calling of our souls. Not to act upon that ambition is to turn our backs on ourselves and on the reason for our existence.

When we drug ourselves to blot out our soul's call, we are being good Americans and exemplary consumers.

The last thing we want is to remain as we are.

Writers think in metaphors. Editors work in metaphors. A great reader reads in metaphors. All are continually asking, What does this represent? What does it stand for? They are trying to take everything one level deeper. When they get to that level, they will try to go deeper again.