Quotes from Steven Pressfield

It is one thing to study war and another to live the warrior's life.

These characters might not be interesting to anyone else but they're absolutely fascinating to us. They are us. Meaner, smarter, sexier versions of ourselves. It's fun to be with them because they're wrestling with the same issue that has its hooks into us. They're our soul mates, our lovers, our best friends. Even the villains. Especially the villains.

When we drug ourselves to blot out our soul's call, we are being good Americans and exemplary consumers. We're doing exactly what TV commercials and pop materialist culture have been brainwashing us to do from birth.

Whatever you can do, or dream you can, begin it. Boldness has genius, magic, and power in it. Begin it now."   —W. H. Murray, The Scottish Himalayan Expedition

the man who really loves his country is not the one who refuses to attack it when he has been unjustly driven from it, but the man whose desire for it is so strong that he will shrink from nothing in his efforts to get back there again.

While those who will not govern themselves are condemned to find masters to govern over them.

We master the technique of our jobs.

the Spartan right fall upon the defenders of Antirhion, not in frenzied shrieking rage, lip-curled and fang-bared, but predator-like, cold-blooded, applying the steel with the wordless cohesion of the killing pack and the homicidal efficiency of the hunt.

Give the act to me. Purged of hope and ego, Fix your attention on the soul. Act and do for me.

When we drug ourselves to blot out our soul's call, we are being good Americans and exemplary consumers. We're doing exactly what TV commercials and pop materialist culture have been brainwashing us to do from birth. Instead of applying self-knowledge, self-discipline, delayed gratification and hard work, we simply consume a product. Many

any act that derives from our higher nature instead of our lower. Any of these acts will elicit Resistance.

The hero wanders. The hero suffers. The hero returns.