How many of us have become drunks and drug addicts, developed tumors and neuroses, succumbed to painkillers, gossip, and compulsive cell-phone use, s… - Steven Pressfield

...she (the artist, the writer) doesn't wait for inspiration, she acts in the anticipation of its apparition.

The professional learns to recognize envy-driven criticism and to take it for what it is: the supreme compliment. The critic hates most that which he would have done himself if he had had the guts.

"A thousand years from now" Leonidas declared, "two thousand, three thousand years hence, men a hundred generations yet unborn may, for their private purposes, make journey to our country. They will come, scholars perhaps, or travelers from beyond the sea, prompted by curiosity regarding the past, or appetite for knowledge of the ancients. They will peer out across our plain and probe among the stone and rubble of our nation. What will they learn about us? Their shovels will unearth neither brilliant palaces nor temples. Their picks will prize forth no everlasting architecture or art. What will remain of the Spartans? Not monuments of marble or bronze, but this......what we do here, today." Out beyond the narrows, the enemy trumpets sounded.