Steven Pressfield Quotes

When I think over what I have said, I envy dumb people.

I don't understand what I did wrong except live a life that everyone is jealous of.

Getting up and criticizing the other fellow because he's in and you are not seems to me a futile waste of time. Especially as you know in your heart that you would be doing more or less the same thing if you were in his place.

Most people who are hating on you, they are not worried about where you are. They're worried about where you're going.

Most of those who spend their lives as critics secretly wish they'd be considered important enough for someone to bother criticizing them.

The highest point to which a weak but experienced mind can rise is detecting the weakness of better men.

We cuss them because we're not good enough for them. We hate them because they wouldn't look at us, couldn't be bothered to give us an interview. I guess there's a Trent & Brent in every city, in every field. I didn't make it and I don't belong, so I'll just go through life hating them.

People will try to rain on your parade because they have no parade of their own.

Didn't you ever notice how it's always people who wish they had somethin' or had done somethin' that hate the hardest?

I am jealous of those who think more deeply, who write better, who draw better, who ski better, who look better, who live better, who love better than I.

I hate those people that get up and they're amazing. I think you just have to be kind of wasted to go and do it.

Criticising the other fellow because he's in and you are not seems to me a futile waste of time.

I think one thing that's important to maintain is a sense of fear, always doubting yourself... a good dose of insecurity helps your work in some ways.

I think it bothers people to see people that are happy and successful. So they try to find what's wrong with them.

You have to be sincere in your feelings. And fear is one of those, sometimes; doubt is one of those; jealousy, anger - all your emotions are not going to be considered the strong emotions; all of them are not going to be love, happiness, joy.

I worry that I can come off smarmy. I wonder if I was listening to myself if I'd want to kick my own ass.

A critic is a eunuch working in a harem. He watches it, but he knows he can't do it. Critics very often are failed writers and, like failed priests, they hate religion.

It's not people who resent successful people; it's resentful people who resent successful people.

Some days I totally appreciate everything that's happening to me, and some days I feel everyone's waiting for me to mess up.

Sometimes I lie awake at night, and ask, 'Where have I gone wrong?' Then a voice says to me, 'This is going to take more than one night.'

Sometimes in the past when I played something might make me lose focus, or I would go home after a game where I thought I could have played better and I would let it hang over my head for a long time when it shouldn't.

Rancor is an outpouring of a feeling of inferiority.

I was happy when I got into film school. I'd simply satisfied my ambition to show them that I could get in - nothing else - although I do believe they shouldn't have accepted me. I was a complete idiot. I can't understand why they took me. Probably because I'd tried three times.

Nothing is more humiliating than to see idiots succeed in enterprises we have failed in.

Usually when I see myself in a film or on television, there's about a six-month period where I can't look at it because all I'll see are the mistakes. I'm just appalled by the person that I see.