Steven Pressfield Quotes

The counterfeit innovator is wildly self-confident. The real one is scared to death.

One of the biggest obstacles I've overcome in my life was thinking I didn't deserve to be successful. Artistically I'm not as much of a heavyweight as someone like Paul Simon or Joni Mitchell, because I'm not a creator of original music, and I worried about that for years.

I wish I had less fear about creating my own parts.

If you're going to be an artist, you need to be an original.

Artists should never look at pictures, but should stutter in a language of their own.

An artist must find his expression closely linked to his individual experience or else follow in the old grooves resulting in lifeless forms.

An artist is a person who has invented an artist.

I think perhaps I've learned to be myself. I have a theory that all artists who would be important - painters and writers - must learn to be themselves. It takes a very long time.

The artist is obliged to invent the self who will paint his pictures.

I'd like to walk that fine line between the authentic artist self and the manufactured artist self. I'd like to exist outside of a set of expectations or assumptions about what the Kehinde Wiley brand is. And I'd like to walk towards something that's a bit more unpredictable, human.

I'd be far too self-conscious and insecure if I suspected my editor might be a better novelist than I.

If you're not observing the world around you, in some sense you're not really an artist because then that means you're just replicating other people's stuff, or, I don't even know what you're doing.

An original artist is unable to copy. So he has only to copy in order to be original.

I fear becoming formulaic. Some of my books are.

You may or may not like 'Baaz.' But you will definitely say I have done something different.

So many artists try to be something that they're not.

As a young artist, especially in rap and at that time that I came out, originality was big.

I certainly would not call myself creative. There are other coaches who are innovative and everything else. I wouldn't be that guy, that's for sure.

The real artist's work is a surprise to himself.

They[ Lana and Andy Wachowski]are true artists. They really are trying to say something and trying to create something original, and there aren't that many people who do that.

Nothing will stop you being creative more effectively as the fear of making a mistake.

No artist is normal. Who happen to be normal cannot be an artist.

Real artists, it seems to me, are those who don't repeat themselves.

Most artists I know consider themselves to be phonies, along with the feeling that there's something that you're doing is essential, essential to communicate, and deeply, deeply real.

Most people are afraid to trust their imaginations and the artist is not.