Quote

The sign of the amateur is overglorification of and preoccupation with the mystery. The professional shuts up. She doesn't talk about it. She does her work.

Steven Pressfield

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Steven Pressfield
Age: 81
Born: 1943
Born: September 1
Author
Novelist
Screenwriter
Writer
Port-of-Spain
Talk
Doesn
Doe
Shuts
Work
Amateur
Preoccupation
Professional
Sign
Mystery

More quotes by Steven Pressfield

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The difference between an amateur and a professional is in their habits. An amateur has amateur habits. A professional has professional habits. We can never free ourselves from habit. But we can replace bad habits with good ones.
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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.
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The part we create from can't be touched by anything our parents did, or society did. That part is unsullied, uncorrupted soundproof, waterproof, and bulletproof. In fact, the more troubles we've got, the better and richer that part becomes.
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It is one thing to study war and another to live the warrior's life.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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The professional does not permit himself to become hidebound within one incarnation, however comfortable or successful. Like a transmigrating soul, he shucks his outworn body and dons a new one. He continues his journey.
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Playing the game for money produces the proper professional attitude. It inculcates the lunch-pail state of mind that shows up for work despite rain or snow or dark of night and slugs it out day after day.
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Do I really believe that my work is crucial to the planet's survival? Of course not. But it's as important to me as catching that mouse is to the hawk circling outside my window. He's hungry. He needs a kill. So do I.
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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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Resistance is implacable, intractable, indefatigable.
Steven Pressfield
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If we were born to overthrow the order of ignorance and injustice of the world, it’s our job to realize it and get down to business.
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One thing I've found in any project is almost universally about three quarters of the way through - or maybe a little father, maybe seventh eighths on the way through - any project will explode.
Steven Pressfield
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The opposite of fear is love - love of the challenge, love of the work, the pure joyous passion to take a shot at our dream and see if we can pull it off.
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As all born teachers, he was primarily a student.
Steven Pressfield
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Defeating Resistance is like giving birth. It seems absolutely impossible until you remember that women have been pulling it off successfully, with support and without, for fifty million years.
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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.
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Resistance really takes the shape, for me, in voices in my head telling me why I can't do something or why I should put it off for another day, procrastinate for another day.
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The counterfeit innovator is wildly self-confident. The real one is scared to death.
Steven Pressfield