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The Artist's Journey: The Wake of the Hero's Journey and the Lifelong Pursuit of Meaning QUOTES

The Artist's Journey: The Wake of the Hero's Journey and the Lifelong Pursuit of Meaning QUOTES

1 " Subject is deeper than topic. It's not "what it's about," it's what it's really about. "

― Steven Pressfield , The Artist's Journey: The Wake of the Hero's Journey and the Lifelong Pursuit of Meaning

2 " On our hero's journey, we see, we experience, we suffer. We learn. On our hero's journey, we acquire a history that is ours alone. It's a secret history, a private history, a personal history. No one has it but us. No one knows it but us. This secret history is the most valuable possession we hold, or ever will hold. We will draw upon it for the rest of our lives. "

― Steven Pressfield , The Artist's Journey: The Wake of the Hero's Journey and the Lifelong Pursuit of Meaning

3 " What was clear to me was that something was happening, and that something was a train I couldn't stop or slow down or get off. What was clear too was when it ended. I knew the exact moment. I could feel it. Even then, in that hour, I understood that the experience was of supreme value and importance. I didn't need hindsight. I knew in the moment. My family may have been repelled, even appalled by where I had been and what I had done; my friends may have feared for my sanity; others who cared for me may have shaken their heads at the waste and folly and futility. Even I understood it would take me years to recover. I didn't care. The trip was worth it. Why? Because I now had a history that was mine alone. I had an ordeal that I had survived and a passage that I had paid for with my own blood. Nobody knew about this passage but me. Nobody would ever know, nor did I feel the slightest urge to communicate it. This was mine, and nobody could ever take it away from me. I had punched my ticket. I had filled in the blanks. "

― Steven Pressfield , The Artist's Journey: The Wake of the Hero's Journey and the Lifelong Pursuit of Meaning

4 " The hero's journey software in our heads is demanding to be lived out. The blanks are insisting on being filled in. "

― Steven Pressfield , The Artist's Journey: The Wake of the Hero's Journey and the Lifelong Pursuit of Meaning

5 " No matter what a writer or artist may tell you, they have no clue what they're doing before they do it—and, for the most part, while they're doing it. "

― Steven Pressfield , The Artist's Journey: The Wake of the Hero's Journey and the Lifelong Pursuit of Meaning

6 " found that what I had desired all my life was not to live—if what others are doing is called living—but to express myself. I realized that I had never had the least interest in living, but only in this which I am doing now, something which is parallel to life, of it at the same time, and beyond it. What is true interests me scarcely at all, nor even what is real; only that interests me which I imagine to be, that which I had stifled every day in order to live. —Henry Miller, Tropic of Capricorn "

― Steven Pressfield , The Artist's Journey: The Wake of the Hero's Journey and the Lifelong Pursuit of Meaning