Quotes About Persistence

We can never eliminate Resistance. It will never go away. But we can outsmart it, and we can enlist allies that are as powerful as it is. One thing we can never, never permit ourselves to do is to take Resistance lightly, to underestimate it or to fail to take it into account.

Soak up what you need to fill in the gaps. Keep working.

When we've got David Lean's eight sequences, we're home except for one thing: The actual work. Cover the Canvas One rule for first full working drafts: get them done ASAP.

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

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.

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.

Every morning you wake up and the dragon's there and you'd have to slay that dragon anew every morning. The only difference is that after you've done it enough times you, you now are confident that it can be done, but it never goes away, And there's no magic bullet.

My friend Tony Keppelman snapped me out of it by asking if I was gonna quit. Hell, no! Then be happy. 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.

If we were the last person on earth, would we still show up at the studio, the rehearsal hall, the laboratory?

Resistance hates two qualities above all others: concentration and depth. Why? Because when we work with focus and we work deep, we succeed

The professional cannot allow the actions of others to define his reality. Tomorrow morning the critic will be gone, but the writer will still be there facing the blank page. Nothing matters but that he keep working. Short of a family crisis or the outbreak of World War III, the professional shows up, ready to serve the gods.

The professional blows critics off. He doesn't even hear them. Critics, he reminds himself, are the unwitting mouthpieces of Resistance and as such can be truly cunning and pernicious. They can articulate in their reviews the same toxic venom that Resistance itself concocts inside our heads. That is their real evil. Not that we believe them, but that we believe the Resistance in our own minds, for which critics serve as unconscious spokespersons.

BOOK TWO COMBATING RESISTANCE

Why have I stressed professionalism so heavily in the preceding chapters? Because the most important thing about art is to work. Nothing else matters except sitting down every day and trying.   Why is this so important?   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.

Creating soap opera in our lives is a symptom of Resistance.

The professional gives an ear to criticism, seeking to learn and grow. But she never forgets that Resistance is using criticism against her on a far more diabolical level.

Steven Pressfield

faces at a dead run. Yet never have my heart and

If you cave in today you're 2x as likely to cave tomorrow. If you so much say hello, you're finished. Don't even pick up the phone.

Steven Pressfield

All I know how to do is work.

How did you keep going all those years without any success?" I couldn't have answered at the time, except to say that I had no choice. Any time I tried to take the intelligent course, i.e., get a real job, I became so depressed I couldn't stand it.

If we can't finish, all our work is for nothing.