542 Quotes by Steven Pressfield

At least twice a week, I pause in the rush of work and have a meeting with myself. (If I were part of a team, I’d call a team meeting.) I ask myself, again, of the project: “What is this damn thing about?” Keep refining your understanding of the theme; keep narrowing it down.

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.

The drawing is also a reminder that there’s an artist within each of us, and we must encourage that artist to do the work, to make something that matters, regardless of anything else that is going on.

What's the difference between a Spartan king and a mid-ranker? One man will lob this query to his mate as they prepare to bed down in the open in a cold driving rain. His friend considers mock-theatrically for a moment. .'The king sleeps in that shithole over there' he replies. 'We sleep in this shithole over here.

The athlete knows the day will never come when he wakes up pain-free. He has to play hurt.

Art is a war - between ourselves and the forces of self-sabotage that would stop us from doing our work. The artist is a warrior.

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.

The essence of professionalism is the focus upon the work and its demands, while we are doing it, to the exclusion of all else.

Writers think in metaphors. Editors work in metaphors. A great reader reads in metaphors.