Quote

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

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

Steven Pressfield
Age: 81
Born: 1943
Born: September 1
Author
Novelist
Screenwriter
Writer
Port-of-Spain
Parts
War
Art
Two
Neatly
Better
Divide
Life
Divides
Turning
Wrote

More quotes by Steven Pressfield

Image
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.
Steven Pressfield
Image
The professional does not wait for inspiration he acts in anticipation of it.
Steven Pressfield
Image
The professional loves her work. She is invested in it wholeheartedly. But she does not forget that the work is not her.
Steven Pressfield
Image
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
Image
Making a judgment, taking a stand and then acting against an injustice or acting to support excellence is the stuff of the everyman hero. If you are an aspiring artist and you wish to avoid “judgments,” you'll find that you have nothing to say.
Steven Pressfield
Image
Resistance is not a peripheral opponent. Resistance arises from within. It is self-generated and self-perpetuated. resistance is the enemy within.
Steven Pressfield
Image
Resistance is greatest just before the finish line.
Steven Pressfield
Image
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
Image
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
Image
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
Image
Don't wait for someone else to validate you. Validate yourself.
Steven Pressfield
Image
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.
Steven Pressfield
Image
A cavalryman's horse should be smarter than he is. But the horse must never be alowed to know this.
Steven Pressfield
Image
When a novelist or screenwriter is looking for a subject, the element he's seeking is conflict. Conflict makes drama. Conflict produces great characters and memorable scenes. So war is a natural topic.
Steven Pressfield
Image
The awakening an artist must be ruthless, not only with herself but with others.
Steven Pressfield
Image
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
Image
On the artist's journey we are redefining and reconfiguring ourselves and our lives.
Steven Pressfield
Image
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.
Steven Pressfield
Image
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
Image
We are all warriors. Each of us struggles every day to define and defend our sense of purpose and integrity, to justify our existence on the planet and to understand, if only within our own hearts, who we are and what we believe in.
Steven Pressfield