The War of Art

He then presents a rogue's gallery of the many manifestations of Resistance.

In the second book Pressfield lays out the day-by-day, step-by-step campaign of the professional: preparation, order, patience, endurance, acting in the face of fear and failure—no excuses, no bullshit.

When we sit down each day and do our work, power concentrates around us... we become like a magnetized rod that attracts iron filings. Ideas come. Insights accrete.

The enemy is a very good teacher.

Resistance is the most toxic force on the planet. It is the root of more unhappiness than poverty, disease, and erectile dysfunction.

We don't even know what hit us. I never did.

Resistance plays for keeps. Resistance's goal is not to wound or disable. Resistance aims to kill.

The more important a call or action is to our soul's evolution, the more Resistance we will feel toward pursuing it.

To begin Book One, Pressfield labels the enemy of creativity Resistance, his all-encompassing term for what Freud called the Death Wish—that destructive force inside human nature that rises whenever we consider a tough, long-term course of action that might do for us or others something that's actually good.

Resistance will tell you anything to keep you from doing your work. It will perjure, fabricate, falsify; seduce, bully, cajole.