Quotes About Persistence

Resistance cannot be seen, touched, heard, or smelled. But it can be felt.

Resistance will tell you anything to keep you from doing your work.

Like a magnetized needle floating on a surface of oil, Resistance will unfailingly point to true North - meaning that calling or action it most wants to stop us from doing. We can use this. We can use it as a compass. We can navigate by Resistance, letting it guide us to that calling or action that we must follow before all others.

We feed it [Resistance] with power by our fear of it. Master that fear and we conquer Resistance.

Resistance is the most toxic force on the planet.

No matter how great a writer, artist, or entrepreneur, he is a mortal, he is fallible. He is not proof against Resistance. He will drop the ball; he will crash. That's why they call it rewriting.

How many pages have I produced? I don't care. Are they any good? I don't even think about it. All that matters is I've put in my time and hit it with all I've got. All that counts is that, for this day, for this session, I have overcome Resistance.

The professional arms himself with patience, not only to give the stars time to align in his career, but to keep himself from flaming out in each individual work.

We're wrong if we think we're the only ones struggling with Resistance. Everyone who has a body experiences Resistance.

The enemy is Resistance.

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

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.

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.

The working artist will not tolerate trouble in her life because she knows trouble prevents her from doing her work. The working artist banishes from her world all sources of trouble. She harnesses the urge for trouble and transforms it in her work.

Because when we sit down day after day and keep grinding, something mysterious starts to happen. A process is set into motion by which, inevitably and infallibly, heaven comes to our aid. Unseen forces enlist in our cause; serendipity reinforces our purpose.

Once we commit to action, the worst thing we can do is to stop.

Anything that draws attention to ourselves through pain-free or artificial means is a manifestation of Resistance.

The professional dedicates himself to mastering technique not because he believes technique is a substitute for inspiration but because he wants to be in possession of the full arsenal of skills when inspiration does come.

When we sit down each day and do our work, power concentrates around us .

Sometimes on Wednesday I'll read something that I wrote on Tuesday and I'll think, "This is crap. I hate it and I hate myself." Then I'll re-read the identical passage on Thursday. To my astonishment, it has become brilliant overnight. Ignore false negatives. Ignore false positives. Both are Resistance. Keep working.

The Spartan king Agesilaus was still fighting in armor when he was eighty-two. Picasso was painting past ninety, and Henry Miller was chasing women (I'm sure Picasso was too) at eighty-nine. Once we turn pro, we're like sharks who have tasted blood, or renunciants who have glimpsed the face of God. For us, there is no finish line. No bell ends the bout. Life is the pursuit. Life is the hunt. When our hearts burst... then we'll go out, and no sooner.

The professional keeps his eye on the doughnut and not on the hole. He reminds himself it's better to be in the arena, getting stomped by the bull, than to be up in the stands or out in the parking lot.