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Artists are modest. They know they're not doing the work they're just taking dictation.

Steven Pressfield

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Steven Pressfield
Age: 81
Born: 1943
Born: September 1
Author
Novelist
Screenwriter
Writer
Port-of-Spain
Modest
Artists
Taking
Artist
Work
Dictation

More quotes by Steven Pressfield

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The amateur tweets. The pro works.
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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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It is a commonplace among artists and children at play that they're not aware of time or solitude while they're chasing their vision. The hours fly. The sculptress and the tree-climbing tyke both look up blinking when Mom calls, 'Suppertime!'
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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.
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The last thing we want is to remain as we are.
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It's one thing to lie to ourselves. It's another thing to believe it.
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The only intercourse possible between the knight and the dragon is battle.
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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.
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The awakening an artist must be ruthless, not only with herself but with others.
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Long-term, we must begin to build our internal strengths. It isn't just skills like computer technology. It's the old-fashioned basics of self-reliance, self-motivation, self-reinforcement, self-discipline, self-command.
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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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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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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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When we turn pro we stop running from our fears. We turn around and face them.
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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.
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Anything that draws attention to ourselves through pain-free or artificial means is a manifestation of Resistance.
Steven Pressfield
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A work-in-progress generates its own energy field. You, the artist or entrepreneur, are pouring love into the work you are suffusing it with passion and intention and hope.
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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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Seeking support from friends and and family is like having people gathered around at your deathbed. It's nice, but when the ship sails, all they can do is stand on the dock waving goodbye.
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