Steven Pressfield
Steven Pressfield
Steven Pressfieldis an American author, of historical fiction and non-fiction, and screenplays...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionAuthor
CountryUnited States of America
heart want ass
Put your ass where your heart wants to be.
easy individual function
These are not easy questions. Who am I? Why am I here? They're not easy because the human being isn't wired to function as an individual.
want lasts
The last thing we want is to remain as we are.
betrayal war self
I was keenly conscious of the comrades-in-arms who had fallen with me. A bond surpassing by a hundredfold that which I had known in life bound me to them. I felt a sense of inexpressible relief and realized that I had feared, more than death, separation from them. I apprehended that excruciating war survivor's torment, the sense of isolation and self-betrayal experienced by those who had elected to cling yet to breath when their comrades had let loose their grip.
power ideas each-day
When we sit down each day and do our work, power concentrates around us... Ideas come. Insights accrete.
attitude rain dark
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.
resistance research want
Research can become Resistance. We want to work, not prepare to work.
pain men artist
The Gnostics believed that exile was the essential condition of man. Do you agree? I do. The artist and the addict both wrestle with this experience of exile. They share an acute, even excruciating sensitivity to the state of separation and isolation, and both actively seek a way to overcome it, to transcend it, or at least to make the pain go away. What is the pain of being human? It's the condition of being suspended between two worlds and being unable to fully enter into either.
children passion thinking
Picasso painted with passion, Mozart composed with it. A child plays with it all day long. You may think you’ve lost your passion, or that you can’t identify it, or that you have so much of it, it threatens to overwhelm you. None of these is true.
real adversity heaven
The professional conducts his business in the real world. Adversity, injustice, bad hops and rotten calls, even good breaks and lucky bounces all comprise the ground over which the campaign must be waged. The field is level, the professional understands, only in heaven.
self giving preparation
Our enemy is not lack of preparation; it’s not the difficulty of the project, or the state of the marketplace or the emptiness of our bank account. The enemy is our chattering brain, which, if we give it so much as a nanosecond, will start producing excuses, alibis, transparent self-justifications and a million reasons why we can’t/shouldn’t/won’t do what we know we need to do.
years giving support
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.
ambition unique soul
To feel ambition and to act upon it is to embrace the unique calling of our souls.
work-out doe free-will
The professional, though he accepts money, does his work out of love. He has to love it. Otherwise he wouldn’t devote his life to it of his own free will.