To yield to Resistance deforms our spirit. It stunts us and makes us less than we are and were born to be.
The part we create from can’t be touched by anything our parents did, or society did. That part is unsullied, uncorrupted; soundproof, waterproof, and bulletproof. In fact, the more troubles we’ve got, the better and richer that part becomes.
Socrates demonstrated long ago, that the truly free individual is free only to the extent of his own self-mastery.
The great thing about writing about the ancient Spartans or Athenians is that so much knowledge is no longer extant that no one, except maybe a Cambridge or Oxford don, can call you out and prove you wrong.
The best and only thing that one artist can do for another is to serve as an example and an inspiration.
The professional arms himself with patience, not only to give the stars time to align in his career, but to keep himself from flaming out in each individual work.
A contemporary or near-future book is much harder because you can’t fake the facts. There are people alive who know much more than you do about the subject. You have to really have your research together – and of course no one can know everything about a topic.
He who whets his steel, whets his courage.
Courage is inseparable from love and leads to what may arguably be the noblest of all warrior virtues: selflessness.
The last element in drama is high stakes. War, of course, is life and death – survival, not only for the story’s characters, but often for the society itself. That’s why I’m drawn to stories that are built around wars, even if they’re not technically “war stories.”
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.
To labor in the arts for any reason other than love is prostitution.
When a novelist or screenwriter is looking for a subject, the element he’s seeking is conflict. Conflict makes drama. Conflict produces great characters and memorable scenes. So war is a natural topic.
Most of us have two lives. The life we live, and the unlived life within us. Between the two stands Resistance.
Be too dumb to quit and too stubborn to back off.
When you’re a working writer, sooner or later friends and acquaintances will get you alone and confide that they, too, have a book in them.
Do you love your idea? Does it feel right on instinct? Are you willing to bleed for 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.
I believe in previous lives and the Muse – and that books and music exist before they are written and that they are propelled into material being by their own imperative to be born, via the offices of those willing servants of discipline, imagination and inspiration whom we call artists.
We will have to choose between the life we want for our future and the life we have left behind.