Steven Pressfield Quotes

I think that I am interested in the resonance between character drama and high stakes, either situational or political or social or other kind of elevated drama, and I tend to find that those things combust.

When a novelist or screenwriter is looking for a subject, the element he's seeking is conflict. Conflict makes drama. Conflict produces great characters and memorable scenes. So war is a natural topic.

The roles I'm interested in or have been interested in, you know, it's going to get down to conflict. Drama is conflict - conflict of interests.

We have always said that in our war with the Arabs we had a secret weapon - no alternative.

Good stories are driven by conflict, tension, and high stakes.

When life is victorious, there is birth; when it is thwarted, there is death. A warrior is always engaged in a life-and-death struggle for Peace.

We have been telling and hearing and reading war stories for millennia. Their endurance may lie in their impossibility; they can never be complete, for the tensions and the contradictions within them will never be eliminated or resolved. That challenge is essential to their power and their attraction. War stories matter.

Anyone who clings to the historically untrue and thoroughly immoral doctrine that violence never solves anything, I would advise to conjure up the ghosts of Napoleon Bonaparte and the Duke of Wellington and let them debate it. The Ghost of Hitler could referee, and the jury might well be the Dodo, the Great Auk, and the Passenger Pigeon. Violence, naked force, has settled more disputes in history than has any other factor, and the contrary opinion is wishful thinking at its worst. Breeds that forget this basic truth have always paid for it with their lives and freedoms.

You're writing about young, vibrant people; there are wins and losses. In other words, it's great drama.

There is a narrative of 'Washington fighting' because it's interesting and it's drama.

Conflict is the place where character and plot intersect.

As a dramatist, you're looking for points of friction.

War's an auction where whoever can pay the most in damage and still be standing wins.

Bonaparte's wish is Peace, nay that he is afraid of war to the last degree.

Every scene should be able to answer three questions: "Who wants what from whom? What happens if they don't get it? Why now?"

Occasional war is one of the rigorous instruments in the hands of Providence to give tone to the character of nations.

In a war, you do whatever you have to do.

In war it does not matter who is right, but who is left.

Good drama must be drastic.

For WAR, consisteth not in Battle only, or the act of fighting; but in a tract of time, wherein the Will to content by Battle is sufficiently known.... So the nature of War, consisteth not in actual fighting; but in the known disposition thereto, during all the time there is no assurance to the contrary. All other time is PEACE.

War is not for winning, Masha," sighed Koschei, reading the tracks of supply lines, of pincer strategies, over her shoulder. "It is for surviving.

I think conflict is one of the things that makes for a good story.

As an actor, I'm always interested in my characters getting into trouble, because conflict is, you know, the great determiner of someone's mettle.

We need the villain sometimes. It makes for an interesting story.

President Trump is trying to avoid war through economic pressure. Our so-called allies are undermining that pressure and in the process making war more likely.