Steven Pressfield Quotes

Talent works, genius creates.

What a fine line there is between artistry and insanity. There's no formula for it, and I think a lot of people when they're around you - even those closest to you - when you're in that whirl of creativity and you're grabbing those things out of the air, there's no rational process.

You start by copying other people's paintings or music or whatever. You get all of those skills before you branch out. Really creative people have a fantastic ability to copy things and then combine them in new ways. And whether we're talking about genes or memes, recombination is the real heart of creativity.

You can't have a masterpiece without madness.

What has been done in the world - the works of genius - cost nothing. There is no painful effort, but it is the spontaneous flowing of the thought. Shakespeare made his Hamlet as a bird weaves its nest.

The Man of Genius may at the same time be, indeed is commonly, an Artist, but the two are not to be confounded. The Man of Genius,referred to mankind, is an originator, an inspired or demonic man, who produces a perfect work in obedience to laws yet unexplored. The artist is he who detects and applies the law from observation of the works of Genius, whether of man or nature. The Artisan is he who merely applies the rules which others have detected. There has been no man of pure Genius, as there has been none wholly destitute of Genius.

Genius is rarely able to give any account of its own processes.

I love the creative process. That's always been the closest thing to my heart, creating something.

Of course creativity is a mystery. We don't know what drives it or what constitutes it. It's one of those things, like genius, you know it when you see it but it's impossible to define.

You don't know how much artists go through to make it look so easy. It's all in the practice.

God has given us an imagination, and our imagination is really the principle tool from which all creativity and artistry comes from.

I like messing around, and I like working with artists who I respect.

I want to create. I think that's the one word I can grow on.

I want to spend my time between the creation of ideas and the creation of things.

Conception, my boy, fundamental brain work, is what makes all the difference in art.

Nature is the master of talents; genius is the master of nature.

Making the simple complicated is commonplace; making the complicated simple, awesomely simple, that's creativity.

I'm always looking at other artists and trying to get inspired by different things.

I always knew that I wanted to be creative, that I wanted to create something.

Somebody informed me recently that the key to every art, from writing to gardening to sculpture, is creativity. I beg to differ.

Creating something is all about problem-solving.

Neither a lofty degree of intelligence nor imagination nor both together go to the making of genius. Love, love, love, that is the soul of genius.

I believe in creative work.

Creativity is not the finding of a thing, but the making something out of it after it is found.

Genius is eternal patience.