Steven Pressfield, The War of Art: Break Through the Blocks & Win Your Inner Creative Battles

28 quotes

Quotes by Steven Pressfield, The War of Art: Break Through the Blocks & Win Your Inner Creative Battles

"The awakening an artist must be ruthless, not only with herself but with others."

Steven Pressfield, The War of Art: Break Through the Blocks & Win Your Inner Creative Battles

"The artist committing himself to his calling has volunteered for hell."

Steven Pressfield, The War of Art: Break Through the Blocks & Win Your Inner Creative Battles

"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, The War of Art: Break Through the Blocks & Win Your Inner Creative Battles

"This is the other secret that real artists know and wannabe writers don’t. When we sit down each day and do our work, power concentrates around us. The Muse takes note of our dedication. She approves. We have earned favor in her sight. When we sit down and work, we become like a magnetized rod that attracts iron filings. Ideas come. Insights accrete."

Steven Pressfield, The War of Art: Break Through the Blocks & Win Your Inner Creative Battles

"We fear discovering that we are more than we think we are. More than our parents/children/teachers think we are. We fear that we actually possess the talent that our still, small voice tells us. That we actually have the guts, the perseverance, the capacity. We fear that we truly can steer our ship, plant our flag, reach our Promised Land. We fear this because, if it’s true, then we become estranged from all we know. We pass through a membrane. We become monsters and monstrous."

Steven Pressfield, The War of Art: Break Through the Blocks & Win Your Inner Creative Battles

"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."

Steven Pressfield, The War of Art: Break Through the Blocks & Win Your Inner Creative Battles

"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."

Steven Pressfield, The War of Art: Break Through the Blocks & Win Your Inner Creative Battles

"We’re all pros already. 1) We show up every day 2) We show up no matter what 3) We stay on the job all day 4) We are committed over the long haul 5) The stakes for us are high and real 6) We accept remuneration for our labor 7) We do not overidentify with our jobs 8 ) We master the technique of our jobs 9) We have a sense of humor about our jobs 10) We receive praise or blame in the real world"

Steven Pressfield, The War of Art: Break Through the Blocks & Win Your Inner Creative Battles

"There's a problem with the hierarchical orientation, though. When the numbers get too big, the thing breaks down. A pecking order can hold only so many chickens."

Steven Pressfield, The War of Art: Break Through the Blocks & Win Your Inner Creative Battles

"When we drug ourselves to blot out our soul's call, we are being good Americans and exemplary consumers."

Steven Pressfield, The War of Art: Break Through the Blocks & Win Your Inner Creative Battles

"The working artist will not tolerate trouble in her life because she knows trouble prevents her from doing her work. The working artist banishes from her world all sources of trouble. She harnesses the urge for trouble and transforms it in her work."

Steven Pressfield, The War of Art: Break Through the Blocks & Win Your Inner Creative Battles

"Rule of thumb: The more important a call or action is to our soul's evolution, the Resistance we will feel toward pursuing it."

Steven Pressfield, The War of Art: Break Through the Blocks & Win Your Inner Creative Battles

"The professional learns to recognize envy-driven criticism and to take it for what it is: the supreme compliment. The critic hates most that which he would have done himself if he had had the guts."

Steven Pressfield, The War of Art: Break Through the Blocks & Win Your Inner Creative Battles

"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, The War of Art: Break Through the Blocks & Win Your Inner Creative Battles

"Lat at nigh have you experienced a vision of the person you might become, the work you could accomplish, the realized being you were mean to be? Are you a writer who doesn't write, a painter who doesn't pain, an entrepreneur who never starts a venture? Then you know what Resistance is."

Steven Pressfield, The War of Art: Break Through the Blocks & Win Your Inner Creative Battles

"Like a magnetized needle floating on a surface of oil, Resistance will unfailingly point to true North - meaning that calling or action it most wants to stop us from doing.We can use this. We can use it as a compass. We can navigate by Resistance, letting it guide us to that calling or action that we must follow before all others."

Steven Pressfield, The War of Art: Break Through the Blocks & Win Your Inner Creative Battles

"Nothing is as empowering as real-world validation, even if it's for failure."

Steven Pressfield, The War of Art: Break Through the Blocks & Win Your Inner Creative Battles

"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, The War of Art: Break Through the Blocks & Win Your Inner Creative Battles

"The part that needs healing is our personal life. Personal life has nothing to do with work. Besides, what better way of healing than to find our center of self-sovereignty? Isn't that the whole point of healing?"

Steven Pressfield, The War of Art: Break Through the Blocks & Win Your Inner Creative Battles

"It can pay off, being a hack. Given the depraved state of American culture, a slick dude can make millions being a hack. But even if you succeed, you lose, because you've sold out your Muse, and your Muse is you, the best part of yourself, where your finest and only true work comes from."

Steven Pressfield, The War of Art: Break Through the Blocks & Win Your Inner Creative Battles

"The hack is like a politician who consults the polls before he takes a position. He's a demagogue. He panders."

Steven Pressfield, The War of Art: Break Through the Blocks & Win Your Inner Creative Battles

"It's not the writing part that's hard. What's hard is sitting down to write.What keeps us from sitting down is Resistance."

Steven Pressfield, The War of Art: Break Through the Blocks & Win Your Inner Creative Battles

"...she (the artist, the writer) doesn't wait for inspiration, she acts in the anticipation of its apparition."

Steven Pressfield, The War of Art: Break Through the Blocks & Win Your Inner Creative Battles

"The artist must be like that Marine. He has to know how to be miserable. He has to love being miserable."

Steven Pressfield, The War of Art: Break Through the Blocks & Win Your Inner Creative Battles