Steven Pressfield Quotes

I enjoyed being in movies when I was a boy. As a child you're not acting - you believe. Ah, if an adult could only act as a child does with that insane, playing-at-toy- soldiers concentration!

Once in a while, I do these things that would make the 10-year old version of me laugh. I don't know why. You've got to do something a little bit immature. I'm surprised at how often those are my best ideas.

Strange questions are the more interesting ones. Children by and large don't try to trip you up... they want to find out how you do this funny thing that you do... if they've loved a story they love to know how it started.

I think that the greatest gift God ever gave man is not the gift of sight but the gift of vision. Sight is a function of the eyes, but vision is a function of the heart.

I believe in the imagination. What I cannot see is infinitely more important than what I can see.

The most beautiful things are those that madness prompts and reason writes.

I'm teaching myself to believe in things I don't understand, I don't even know if they're true, but that's what dreamers do.

The child race is fresh, eager, interested, innocent, imaginative, healthy and full of faith, where the adult race, more often than not, is stale, spiritually debauched, unimaginative, unhealthy, and without faith.

The poet is one who is able to keep the fresh vision of the child alive.

Every child is in a way a genius; and every genius is in a way a child.

If I am guilty of anything it is of believing what God said about children: 'Suffer little children to come unto me and forbid them not, for such is the Kingdom of Heaven.' In no way do I think that I am God, but I try to be God-like in my heart.

I think one of the reasons we have children is to believe everything all over again. And I'm not talking Santa, here, either.

The imagination is precious. Don't lose it. Don't lose the child in you.

Those who say they believe in God and yet neither love nor fear Him, do not in fact believe in Him but in those who have taught them that God exists. Those who believe that they believe in God, but without any passion in their heart, any anguish of mind, without uncertainty, without doubt, without an element of despair even in their consolation, believe only in the God-idea, not in God.

When you don't believe something, you can't make yourself believe it. There's nothing you can do to believe it again. You either believe it or you don't.

I write, not for children,but for the child-like, whether they be of five, or fifty, or seventy-five.

If you stumble about believability, what are you living for? Love is hard to believe, ask any lover. Life is hard to believe, ask any scientist. God is hard to believe, ask any believer. What is your problem with hard to believe?

In moments of doubt I cry, ‘Could God Himself create such lovely things as I dreamed?’ ‘Whence then came thy dream?’ answers Hope.

Don't be too dismissive of children. While it's true that few children are artists, all artists are children.

The central idea of poetry is the idea of guessing right, like a child.

Having children has helped me become a better actor because they remind you to play make believe. It's the ease and naturalness of their beings. They just play and it's completely real for them at the time. As an actor, if we do it well, we make you believe.

I had a teacher in Paris, who said that if an actor forgot what it's like to play as a child he shouldn't be an actor. I've always loved being with children. It's marvellous to see the fresh ways they see the world. Watching them look at a tree or a river helps you to understand something that's very important.

When all is said and done, the one sole condition that makes spiritual happiness and preserves it is the absence of doubt.

Mystery is at the heart of creativity. As creative channels, we need to trust the darkness.

I shut the front door upon Christ and Einstein, and at the back door hold out a welcoming hand to little frogs and periwinkles. I believe nothing of my own that I have ever written. I cannot accept that the products of minds are subject-matter for beliefs.