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He who whets his steel, whets his courage

Steven Pressfield

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Steven Pressfield
Age: 81
Born: 1943
Born: September 1
Author
Novelist
Screenwriter
Writer
Port-of-Spain
Whets
Steel
Courage
Military

More quotes by Steven Pressfield

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Resistance in my experience always kicks in when you're trying to move from a lower level to a higher level or to identify with a braver part of yourself or your higher nature. So it's that negative repelling force. It's kind of the dragon that we have to slay every day if we're artists or entrepreneurs.
Steven Pressfield
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Resistance is experienced as fear the degree of fear equates to the strength of Resistance.
Steven Pressfield
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The last element in drama is high stakes. War, of course, is life and death - survival, not only for the story's characters, but often for the society itself. That's why I'm drawn to stories that are built around wars, even if they're not technically war stories.
Steven Pressfield
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Persian envoy our arrows will black out the sun... Dienekes of the Spartans..Good, then we'll fight in the shade.
Steven Pressfield
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When we turn pro we stop running from our fears. We turn around and face them.
Steven Pressfield
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The critic hates most that which he would have done himself if he had had the guts.
Steven Pressfield
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The amateur believes he must first overcome his fear then he can do his work. The professional knows that fear can never be overcome. He knows there is no such thing as a fearless warrior or a dread-free artist.
Steven Pressfield
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Traditional publishers will be dominant, and they should be because they really do assure quality. But eBooks, which are huge already, are going to eclipse everything. They will save traditional publishing the way DVDs saved movie studios (for a while) and they'll greatly expand the number of readers.
Steven Pressfield
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Don't prepare. Begin. Our enemy is not lack of preparation. The enemy is resistance, our chattering brain producing excuses. Start before you are ready.
Steven Pressfield
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F@*# self-doubt. I despise it. I hold it in contempt, along with the hell-spawned ooze-pit of Resistance from which it crawled. I will NEVER back off. I will NEVER give the work anything less than 100%. If I go down in flames, so be it. I'll be back.
Steven Pressfield
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There's a secret that real writers know that wannabe writers don't, and the secret is this: It's not the writing part that's hard. What's hard is sitting down to write. What keeps us from sitting down is Resistance.
Steven Pressfield
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When we sit down to work, we become like a magnetized rod that attracts iron filings. Ideas come. Insights accrete.
Steven Pressfield
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As artists and professionals, it is our obligation to enact our own internal revolution, a private insurrection inside our own skulls. In this uprising we free ourselves from the tyranny of consumer culture.
Steven Pressfield
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The artist committing himself to his calling has volunteered for hell, whether he knows it or not. He will be dining for the duration on a diet of isolation, rejection, self-doubt, despair, ridicule, contempt, and humiliation.
Steven Pressfield
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We need to ascend beyond our own petty Resistance, our own negative self-judgment and self-sabotage, our own I'm not worthy mind-set.
Steven Pressfield
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The professional has learned that success, like happiness, comes as a by-product of work. The professional concentrates on the work and allows rewards to come or not come, whatever they like.
Steven Pressfield
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Rule of thumb: The more important a call or action is to our soul's evolution, the Resistance we will feel toward pursuing it.
Steven Pressfield
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Resistance is directly proportional to love. If you’re feeling massive Resistance, the good news is, it means there’s tremendous love there too. If you didn’t love the project that is terrifying you, you wouldn’t feel anything. The opposite of love isn’t hate it’s indifference.
Steven Pressfield
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I had always been an enthusiastic reader of stuff about ancient Greece. I would read Herodotus and Thucydides just for fun.
Steven Pressfield
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It is one thing to study war and another to live the warrior's life.
Steven Pressfield