Steven Pressfield Quotes

As an artist, you just want to keep creating, keep finding a place that really inspires you that feels fresh and new and keep it exciting.

A lot of artists need structure.

The most potent and sacred command which can be laid upon any artist is the command: wait.

It's hard to predict and to say what goes on inside the minds of an artist, but that's what makes them an artist. That sense of creativity. That thing that makes them tick is probably the very thing that pushes them to the extremes that sometimes can cause, you know, fatalities and things that, you know, that end up not being good.

I do not go in search of poetry. I wait for poetry to visit me.

The little dissatisfaction which every artist feels at the completion of a work forms the germ of a new work.

The artist is the medium between his fantasies and the rest of the world.

What matters is what happens in the soul of an artist when you're playing.

The advice I like to give young artists, or really anybody who’ll listen to me, is not to wait around for inspiration. Inspiration is for amateurs; the rest of us just show up and get to work.

I really admire songwriters or any kind of writer, painter or artist that says, "I'm going to get up at 8 o'clock in the morning and spend this time to this time creating." I do that sometimes, but the songs I like the best come as gifts from somewhere. It's almost like you didn't do anything, like you can't take credit for it because you sat down and the melody and words came out.

Katagiri Roshi says: "Poor artists. They suffer very much. They finish a masterpiece and they are not satisfied. They want to go on and do another." Yes, but it's better to go on and do another if you have the urge than to start drinking and become alcoholic or eat a pound of good fudge and get fat.

Picasso says that an artists paints not to ask a question but because he has found something and he wants to share—he cannot help it—what he has found.

Another thing about creation is that every day it is like it gave birth, and it's always kind of an innocent and refreshing. So it's always virginal to me, and it's always a surprise. ... Each piece seems to have a life of its own. Every little piece or every big piece that I make becomes a very living thing to me, very living. I could make a million pieces; the next piece gives me a whole new thing. It is a new center. Life is total at that particular time. And that's why it's right. That reaffirms my life.

I have disciplined myself when I'm working. When I discovered art, I realized that one could keep that search going within creation. But I also realize that in order to create the art, you have to stay, you can't go too far.

Wholeness is the enemy of the artist. We ought to be broken, ruined in some way.

When the work takes over, then the artist is enabled to get out of the way, not to interfere. When the work takes over, then the artist listens.

The professional does not wait for inspiration; he acts in anticipation of it.

I feel like a slave, and in a way like an artist, because I need to get inspiration everyday, from everything and everyone.

Someone once asked me... whether I waited for inspiration. My answer was: "Every day!"

As long as the artist invents and is inspired, he remains in a constrained state of mind, at least for the purpose of communication. He then wants to say everything, which is the wrong tendency of young geniuses or the right prejudice of old bunglers. Thus, he fails to recognize the value and dignity of self-restraint, which is indeed for both the artist and the man the first and the last, the most necessary and the highest goal.

Dawn is about luminosity and so is the iPhone... The little drawings of the dawn are done while I'm still in bed... If you're in my kind of business you'd be a fool to sleep through that... Artists can't work office hours, can they?

A good artist lets his intuition lead him wherever it wants.

I always say that intuition is the number one tool for an artist.

Those who are waiting for an epiphany to strike may wait forever. The artist simply goes to work, making art, both good and not so good.

Writing is?waiting for the word that may not be there until next Tuesday.