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The song we’re composing already exists in potential. Our work is to find it.

Steven Pressfield

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Steven Pressfield
Age: 81
Born: 1943
Born: September 1
Author
Novelist
Screenwriter
Writer
Port-of-Spain
Already
Song
Find
Work
Composing
Potential
Exists

More quotes by Steven Pressfield

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Next morning I went over to Paul’s for coffee and told him I had finished. “Good for you,” he said without looking up. “Start the next one today.
Steven Pressfield
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The Spartans say that any army may win while it still has legs under it the real test comes when all strength is fled and the men must produce victory on will alone.
Steven Pressfield
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I wrote in the War of Art that I could divide my life neatly into two parts: before turning pro and after. After is better.
Steven Pressfield
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Fear doesn't go away. The warrior and the artist live by the same code of necessity, which dictates that the battle must be fought anew every day.
Steven Pressfield
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On the field of The Self stand a knight and a dragon. You are the knight. Resistance is the dragon.
Steven Pressfield
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What force is yanking at our sleeves? This process of self-revision and self-correction is so common we don't even notice. But it's a miracle.
Steven Pressfield
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A great trick that I learned having worked as a screenwriter for many years, the way screenwriters work, is they break the project down into three-act structure: Act 1, Act 2, Act 3. I think that is a great way to break down any project, whether it's a new business or anything at all.
Steven Pressfield
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It is one thing to study war and another to live the warrior's life.
Steven Pressfield
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Do you love your idea? Does it feel right on instinct? Are you willing to bleed for it?
Steven Pressfield
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Every sun casts a shadow, and genius's shadow is Resistance.
Steven Pressfield
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In other words, any act that rejects immediate gratification in favor of long-term grown, health, or integrity. Or, expressed another way, any act that derives from our high nature instead of our lower. Any of these will elicit Resistance.
Steven Pressfield
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Picasso painted with passion, Mozart composed with it. A child plays with it all day long. You may think 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.
Steven Pressfield
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Right now with blogs and the flood of internet access, a multitude of aspiring writers think they're ready for prime time. They're not. Be great. Read. Write. Bust your ass. Learn and find your voice. As hard as you think it is, it's a hundred times harder.
Steven Pressfield
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The more scared we are of a work or calling, the more sure we can be that we have to do it.
Steven Pressfield
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When we conquer our fears, we discover a boundless, bottomless, inexhaustible well of passion.
Steven Pressfield
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I guess what I want to say to us artists and entrepreneurs is that conventional yardsticks of success don't apply to all enterprises. Labors of love count.
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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We will have to choose between the life we want for our future and the life we have left behind.
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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When we turn pro we stop running from our fears. We turn around and face them.
Steven Pressfield