Steven Pressfield Quotes

I always wonder what drives us as Artists.

It's very important for any artist, in any field, to take their own temperature and check out their own energy, and see what it is they ought to be doing to keep the energy up. Because if your energy is not up, you're going to come up with some really dreary piece of work that no one's going to enjoy.

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

I don't paint every day. I'm not that motivated. I don't do anything the same every day.

If the artist's will is not strong he will see all kinds of unessential things.

Artists are controlled by the life that beats in them, like the ocean beats on the shore.

My creative life is a constant struggle to achieve a balance between letting things flow in and letting things flow out.

the unconscious of an artist is her greatest treasure. It is what transmutes the dross of autobiography into the gold of myth.

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.

The professional is acutely aware of the intangibles that go into inspiration. Out of respect for them, she lets them work. She grants them their sphere while she concentrates on hers.

Great art can only be created out of love.

It is a mistake to talk about the artist looking for his subject. In fact, the subject grows within him like a fruit and begins to demand expression. It is like childbirth. The poet has nothing to be proud of. He is not master of the situation, but a servant. Creative work is his only possible form of existence, and his every work is like a deed he has no power to annul. For him to be aware that the sequence of such deeds is due and ripe, that it lies in the very nature of things, he has to have faith in the idea; for only faith interlocks the system of images for which read system of life.

Don't think about making art, just get it done.

This is the other secret that real artists know and wannabe writers don’t. When we sit down each day and do our work, power concentrates around us. The Muse takes note of our dedication. She approves. We have earned favor in her sight. When we sit down and work, we become like a magnetized rod that attracts iron filings. Ideas come. Insights accrete.

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?

Any artist will tell you he's really only interested in the stuff he's doing now. He will, always. It's true, and it should be like that.

As much as I love performing, nothing juices me up creatively like being in my own studio for an extended period. Songs, ideas, even paintings are pouring out of me. My inspiration and usual subject matter: life.

But the muse won’t always cooperate and she will never be coerced. Sometimes she’d rather take a nap or see a mid-afternoon movie.

The real artist while he paints does not think of the sale, only of the need to make a beautiful living thing.

In general, and most especially with artists, I pay as much attention to the man who does the work, as to the work itself.

I wonder if the artist ever lives his life--he is so busy recreating it.

A work-in-progress generates its own energy field. You, the artist or entrepreneur, are pouring love into the work; you are suffusing it with passion and intention and hope.

Any artist is an instrument-and that's exactly why you can't do it all the time. You can only do it when it's happening, when it's coming through. No matter how much you may want to do it, if it's not happening then it's simply not happening.

I want to communicate. I do; every artist does. That's why you're an artist.

What I mean is sometimes, for an artist, chronic pain can be a gift.