Book detail: The War of Art: Break Through the Blocks and Win Your Inner Creative Battles is presented as a focused source page for quotations connected with this book, collection, transcript, or source record.
This book explores the challenges faced by artists and creatives in their pursuit of artistic expression, offering strategies to overcome internal obstacles and foster a productive creative mindset.
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“Rule of thumb: The more important a call or action is to our soul's evolution, the Resistance we will feel toward pursuing it.”
Source: The War of Art: Break Through the Blocks and Win Your Inner Creative Battles
“The sign of the amateur is overglorification of and preoccupation with the mystery. The professional shuts up. She doesn't talk about it. She does her work.”
Source: The War of Art: Break Through the Blocks and Win Your Inner Creative Battles
“The professional loves her work. She is invested in it wholeheartedly. But she does not forget that the work is not her.”
Source: The War of Art: Break Through the Blocks and Win Your Inner Creative Battles
“Resistance cannot be seen, touched, heard, or smelled. But it can be felt.”
Source: The War of Art: Break Through the Blocks and Win Your Inner Creative Battles
“Resistance is not a peripheral opponent. Resistance arises from within. It is self-generated and self-perpetuated. resistance is the enemy within.”
Source: The War of Art: Break Through the Blocks and Win Your Inner Creative Battles
“Resistance by definition is self-sabotage.”
Source: The War of Art: Break Through the Blocks and Win Your Inner Creative Battles
“The most pernicious aspect of procrastination is that it can become a habit. We don't just put off our lives today; we put them off till our deathbed. Never forget: This very moment, we can change our lives. There never was a moment, and never will be, when we are without the power to alter our destiny. This second we can turn the tables on Resistance. This second, we can sit down and do our work.”
Source: The War of Art: Break Through the Blocks and Win Your Inner Creative Battles
“The professional does not permit himself to become hidebound within one incarnation, however comfortable or successful. Like a transmigrating soul, he shucks his outworn body and dons a new one. He continues his journey.”
Source: The War of Art: Break Through the Blocks and Win Your Inner Creative Battles
“The more scared we are of a work or calling, the more sure we can be that we have to do it.”
Source: The War of Art: Break Through the Blocks and Win Your Inner Creative Battles
“If you were meant to cure cancer or write a symphony or crack cold fusion and you don't do it, you not only hurt yourself, even destroy yourself. You hurt your children. You hurt me. You hurt the planet.”
Source: The War of Art: Break Through the Blocks and Win Your Inner Creative Battles
“The artist committing himself to his calling has volunteered for hell, whether he knows it or not. He will be dining for the duration on a diet of isolation, rejection, self-doubt, despair, ridicule, contempt, and humiliation.”
Source: The War of Art: Break Through the Blocks and Win Your Inner Creative Battles
“Resistance’s goal is not to wound or disable. Resistance aims to kill”
Source: The War of Art: Break Through the Blocks and Win Your Inner Creative Battles
“The professional, though he accepts money, does his work out of love. He has to love it. Otherwise he wouldn’t devote his life to it of his own free will.”
Source: The War of Art: Break Through the Blocks and Win Your Inner Creative Battles
“That’s why an artist must be a warrior and, like all warriors, artists over time acquire modesty and humility. They may, some of them, conduct themselves flamboyantly in public. But alone with the work they are chaste and humble. They know they are not the source of the creations they bring into being. They only facilitate. They carry. They are the willing and skilled instruments of the gods and goddesses they serve.”
Source: The War of Art: Break Through the Blocks and Win Your Inner Creative Battles
“The professional dedicates himself to mastering technique not because he believes technique is a substitute for inspiration but because he wants to be in possession of the full arsenal of skills when inspiration does come. The professional is sly. He knows that by toiling beside the front door of technique, he leaves room for genius to enter by the back.”
Source: The War of Art: Break Through the Blocks and Win Your Inner Creative Battles
“The best and only thing that one artist can do for another is to serve as an example and an inspiration.”
Source: The War of Art: Break Through the Blocks and Win Your Inner Creative Battles
“The professional conducts his business in the real world. Adversity, injustice, bad hops and rotten calls, even good breaks and lucky bounces all comprise the ground over which the campaign must be waged. The field is level, the professional understands, only in heaven.”
Source: The War of Art: Break Through the Blocks and Win Your Inner Creative Battles
“What finally convinced me to go ahead was simply that I was so unhappy not going ahead.”
Source: The War of Art: Break Through the Blocks and Win Your Inner Creative Battles
“Socrates demonstrated long ago, that the truly free individual is free only to the extent of his own self-mastery.”
Source: The War of Art: Break Through the Blocks and Win Your Inner Creative Battles
“Resistance is directly proportional to love. If you’re feeling massive Resistance, the good news is, it means there’s tremendous love there too. If you didn’t love the project that is terrifying you, you wouldn’t feel anything. The opposite of love isn’t hate; it’s indifference.”
Source: The War of Art: Break Through the Blocks and Win Your Inner Creative Battles
“The artist must be like that Marine. He has to know how to be miserable. He has to love being miserable. He has to take pride in being more miserable than any soldier or swabbie or jet jockey. Because this is war, baby. And war is hell.”
Source: The War of Art: Break Through the Blocks and Win Your Inner Creative Battles
“Tomorrow morning the critic will be gone, but the writer will still be there facing the blank page. Nothing matters but that he keep working.”
Source: The War of Art: Break Through the Blocks and Win Your Inner Creative Battles
“If we were born to overthrow the order of ignorance and injustice of the world, it’s our job to realize it and get down to business.”
Source: The War of Art: Break Through the Blocks and Win Your Inner Creative Battles
“It is one thing to study war and another to live the warrior's life.”
Source: The War of Art: Break Through the Blocks and Win Your Inner Creative Battles
“The most important thing about art is to work. Nothing else matters except sitting
down every day and trying. Why is this important? Because when we sit down day after
day and keep grinding, something mysterious starts to happen. A process is set in
motion by which, inevitably and infallibly, heaven comes to our aid. Unseen forces enlist
in our cause; serendipity reinforces our purpose.”
Source: The War of Art: Break Through the Blocks and Win Your Inner Creative Battles
“It’s not the writing part that’s hard. What’s hard is sitting down to write.”
Source: The War of Art: Break Through the Blocks and Win Your Inner Creative Battles
“We come into this world with a specific, personal destiny. We have a job to do, a calling to enact, a self to become. We are who we are from the cradle, and we're stuck with it.”
Source: The War of Art: Break Through the Blocks and Win Your Inner Creative Battles
“The counterfeit innovator is wildly self-confident. The real one is scared to death.”
Source: The War of Art: Break Through the Blocks and Win Your Inner Creative Battles
“Never forget: This very moment, we can change our lives. There never was a moment, and never will be, when we are without the power to alter our destiny.”
Source: The War of Art: Break Through the Blocks and Win Your Inner Creative Battles
“When we sit down day after day and keep grinding, something mysterious starts to happen... Unseen forces enlist in our cause; serendipity reinforces our purpose.”
Source: The War of Art: Break Through the Blocks and Win Your Inner Creative Battles
“Those who will not govern themselves are condemned to find masters to govern over them.”
Source: The War of Art: Break Through the Blocks and Win Your Inner Creative Battles
“It's one thing to lie to ourselves. It's another thing to believe it.”
Source: The War of Art: Break Through the Blocks and Win Your Inner Creative Battles
“Seeking support from friends and and family is like having people gathered around at your deathbed. It's nice, but when the ship sails, all they can do is stand on the dock waving goodbye.”
Source: The War of Art: Break Through the Blocks and Win Your Inner Creative Battles
“Late at night have you experienced a vision of the person you might become, the work you could accomplish, the realized being you were meant to be? Are you a writer who doesn't write, a painter who doesn't paint, an entrepreneur who never starts a venture? Then you know what Resistance is.”
Source: The War of Art: Break Through the Blocks and Win Your Inner Creative Battles
“It may be that the human race is not ready for freedom. The air of liberty may be too rarefied for us to breathe... The paradox seems to be, as Socrates demonstrated long ago, that the truly free individual is free only to the extent of his own self-mastery. While those who will not govern themselves are condemned to find masters to govern over them.”
Source: The War of Art: Break Through the Blocks and Win Your Inner Creative Battles
“You know, Hitler wanted to be an artist. At eighteen he took his inheritance, seven hundred kronen, and moved to Vienna to live and study... Ever see one of his paintings? Neither have I. Resistance beat him. Call it overstatement but I'll say it anyway: it was easier for Hitler to start World War II than it was for him to face a blank square of canvas.”
Source: The War of Art: Break Through the Blocks and Win Your Inner Creative Battles
“Contempt for failure is our cardinal virtue.”
Source: The War of Art: Break Through the Blocks and Win Your Inner Creative Battles
“Look in your own heart. Unless I'm crazy, right now a still small voice is piping up, telling you as it has ten thousand times, the calling that is yours and yours alone. You know it. No one has to tell you. And unless I'm crazy, you're no closer to taking action on it than you were yesterday or will be tomorrow. You think Resistance isn't real? Resistance will bury you.”
Source: The War of Art: Break Through the Blocks and Win Your Inner Creative Battles
“The more fear we feel about a specific enterprise, the more certain we can be that that enterprise is important to us and to the growth of our soul.”
Source: The War of Art: Break Through the Blocks and Win Your Inner Creative Battles
“The athlete knows the day will never come when he wakes up pain-free. He has to play hurt.”
Source: The War of Art: Break Through the Blocks and Win Your Inner Creative Battles
“Our job in this life is not to shape ourselves into some ideal we imagine we ought to be, but to find out who we already are and become it.”
Source: The War of Art: Break Through the Blocks and Win Your Inner Creative Battles