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Difficult Quotes

“People really want to believe that there is no fiction. I think they find it much easier to imagine that novelists are writing memoirs, writing about their lives, because it's difficult to conceive that there's a great imaginary life in which you can participate.”

People Thinking Want Writing Believe Difficult Fiction Imagine Easier Memoir Novelists Imaginary Imagine That Imaginary Life

Author:Mark Leyner

“My prescription for writer's block is to face the fact that there is no such thing.... Writing well is difficult, but one can always write something. And then, with a lot of work, make it better. It's a question of having enough will and ambition, not of hoping to evade this mysterious hysteria people are always talking about.”

People Writing Wells Enough Facts Faces Difficult Talking Ambition Block Mysterious Prescriptions Hysteria Writer's Block Writing Well

Author:Thomas Mallon

“It is very, very difficult for a playwright to write a scene in which a young man has his first deep experience of sex with a girl whom he found immensely attractive, is fully satisfied by this event and gets up and blinds a lot of horses.”

Men Writing Firsts Young Girl Found Sex Difficult Events Scene Horse Satisfied Get Up Attractive Young Man Playwright

Author:Peter Shaffer

“I don't know if you've ever tried writing a Doctor Who story, but it's a lot more difficult than it initially appears, especially if you've got more than one assistant.”

Ifs Knows Writing Stories Difficult Doctors Doctor Who Assistants

Author:Sarah Sutton

“When the babies were very young, I found it difficult to write. I told myself each time that it would be different, I was used to it now, but with every child, for the first four months, I would accomplish nothing.”

Writing Firsts Children Different Would Be Young Used Found Difficult Four Baby Months Accomplish Accomplish Nothing

Author:Ayelet Waldman

“You can teach almost anyone determined to learn them the basics required to write sentences and paragraphs that say what you want them to say clearly and concisely. It's far more difficult to get people to think like a writer, to give up conventional habits of mind and emotion. You must be able to step inside your character's skin, and at the same time to remain outside the dicey circumstances you have maneuvered her into.”

“The nobility of our calling will always be rooted in two commitments difficult to observe: refusal to lie about what we know, and resistance to oppression.”

Knows Writing Two Lying Difficult Calling Commitment Resistance Oppression Rooted Nobility Refusal

Book:Speech of Acceptance Upon the Award of the Nobel Prize for Literature: Delivered in Stockholm on the Tenth of December, Nineteen Hundred and Fifty-seven. [Translated by Justin O'Brien

Source: Speech of Acceptance Upon the Award of the Nobel Prize for Literature: Delivered in Stockholm on the Tenth of December, Nineteen Hundred and Fifty-seven. [Translated by Justin O'Brien

“The imaginative leap for me of writing for women is no more difficult than the one of writing for men. I've always wanted to have women well represented in the work that I've done because I've always been around them and around the way they look at the world.”

Men World Way Writing Wells Looks Done Wanted Difficult Leap Imaginative

Author:Anthony Minghella

“I find writing extremely difficult. I usually have to drag myself to my desk, mainly because I doubt myself. And it's getting harder because I want to improve with every book.”

Want Writing Book Difficult Doubt Harder Drag Desks

Author:Markus Zusak

“The one reader I'm trying to please as I write is me, and I'm pretty difficult to please.”

Writing Trying Difficult Reader Please

Author:Sara Zarr

“Sandeep Jauhar’s Doctored is a passionate and necessary book that asks difficult questions about the future of medicine. The narrative is gripping, and the writing is marvelous. But it was the gravity of the problem—so movingly told—that grabbed and kept my attention throughout this remarkable work.”

Writing Book Problem Asks Difficult Attention Medicine Passionate Narrative Remarkable Gravity Marvelous Gripping Difficult Questions

Author:Siddhartha Mukherjee

“I find it quite difficult to think that there's, you know, about 20 million people listening to my album that I wrote very selfishly to get over a breakup. I didn't write it being that it's going to be a hit.”

People Thinking Knows Writing Difficult Millions Listening Albums Breakup Get Over

Author:Adele

“To say that I enjoyed writing... is like saying I enjoy having fingers and toes. It's difficult to imagine life without them.”

Writing Enjoy Difficult Imagine Fingers Enjoyed Toes Fingers And Toes

Book:Salvation on Sand Mountain: Snake Handling and Redemption in Southern Appalachia

Source: Salvation on Sand Mountain: Snake Handling and Redemption in Southern Appalachia

“Words are changing. I find that old expressions are outdated, so when I write something, I try to find a new expression that hasn't been born yet. It's difficult.”

Writing Trying Difficult Born Expression Outdated

Author:Agnes Denes

“Writing is a difficult trade which must be learned slowly by reading great authors; by trying at the outset to imitate them; by daring then to be original; by destroying one's first productions.”

Writing Trying Firsts Book Reading Difficult Originals Trade Productions Destroying Daring Books And Reading Great Author

Author:Andre Maurois

“In the present state of the world it is difficult not to write lampoons.”

World Writing States Difficult Satire

Author:Juvenal

“Getting ahead in a difficult profession - singing, acting, writing, whatever requires avid faith in yourself. You must be able to sustain yourself against staggering blows and unfair reversals. When I think back to those first couple of years in Rome, those endless rejections, without a glimmer of encouragement from anyone, all those failed screen tests, and yet I never let my desire slide away from me, my belief in myself and what I felt I could achieve.”

“Why do you always write poetry? Why do you not write prose? Prose is so much more difficult.”

Writing Poetry Difficult Prose

Author:Walter Pater

“Writing for children is bloody difficult; books for children are as complex as their adult counterparts, and they should therefore be accorded the same respect.”

Should Writing Children Book Literature Difficult Adults Complexes Bloody Counterparts Children Book

Author:Mark Haddon

“I always appreciate people's opinions, but sometimes I have to take a step back and remember why I'm writing and what I want to do with it. Shutting out the voices is difficult but it's been good for me.”

People Want Writing Sometimes Remember Difficult Voice Steps Opinion Appreciate Appreciate People

Author:Veronica Roth

“It was very difficult to write about my own country, because I have always been the outsider looking in.”

Writing Country Difficult My Own Outsiders

Author:Asne Seierstad

“Unfortunately I've been to jail a couple times. Anytime I come in it's difficult to make music, write songs.”

Writing Song Difficult Couple Jail

Author:Gucci Mane

“I write as clearly as I am able to. I sometimes tackle ideas and notions that are relatively complex, and it is very difficult to be sure that I am conveying them in the best way. Anyone who goes beyond cliche phrases and cliche ideas will have this trouble.”

Way Writing Ideas Sometimes Able Difficult Trouble Complexes Notion Best Way Phrases Cliche Conveying

Author:R. A. Lafferty

“Crossing out is an art that is, perhaps, even more difficult than writing. It requires the sharpest eye to decide what is superfluous and must be removed. And it requires ruthlessness toward yourself -- the greatest ruthlessness and self-sacrifice. You must know how to sacrifice parts in the name of the whole.”

Knows Inspirational Writing Art Self Whole Eye Literature Names Difficult Know How Sacrifice Crossings Self Sacrifice Superfluous Ruthlessness

Author:Yevgeny Zamyatin

“It always seems to someone outside the business that it is very difficult to write for a comedy show because it must be done quickly. Actually, it is much easier to write this humor than to do a joke or a show from scratch, because the audience knows the plot. Just mention what is going on and then deliver the punch line.”

Knows Writing Done Shows Seems Difficult Lines Audience Comedy Easier Jokes Plot Scratches Comedy Shows

Author:Robert Orben

“Writers need to learn their trade, and how to negotiate the increasingly difficult marketplace. The trade can be taught and learned just as the craft can. But a workshop where the trade is the principal focus of interest is not a writing workshop. It is a business class.”

Needs Writing Difficult Interest Class Focus Taught Trade Crafts Principal Marketplace Workshops Writing Workshop

Book:The Wave in the Mind: Talks and Essays on the Writer, the Reader, and the Imagination

Source: The Wave in the Mind: Talks and Essays on the Writer, the Reader, and the Imagination

“Hypertext makes a virtue out of lack of organization, allowing ideas and thoughts to be juxtaposed at will. [...] The advent of hypertext is apt to make writing much more difficult, not easier. Good writing, that is.”

Writing Ideas Difficult Virtue Easier Organization Allowing Good Writing Advent

Author:Donald A. Norman

“My first job was with the Burns Detective Agency. They sent me over to the East River to guard coal barges during these god-awful hours like three to six in the morning. It wasn't a very difficult job -- all I had to do was make a round every fifteen minutes -- but it turned out to be a great environment for writing. I was completely alone in a little outhouse with an electric heater and a little desk.”

Writing Firsts Littles Jobs Three Difficult Hours Morning Environment Minutes Six Rivers Rounds East Awful Agency Electric Fifteen Desks Coal Detectives Barges

Author:Sam Shepard

“Creativity is basically a feminine process. I'm convinced that we have in our soul, everybody, this masculine side and this feminine side. So at the end of the day, you always use this feminine creative energy to write or to do any type of art or creativity. So if I see that my protagonist is feminine, it's not more difficult, no. And even when my protagonist is masculine, I'm writing from using this feminine energy.”

Ifs Writing Art Soul Ends Use Energy Process Difficult Sides Creativity Creative Type Convinced The End Of The Day Feminine Masculine Protagonists Creative Energy Feminine Energy

Author:Paulo Coelho

“If you take the time and put in the effort to write your own material and absolutely refuse to be denied the right to make your film it is difficult whatever colour you are.”

Ifs Writing Film Difficult Effort Materials Refuse Colour Denied Write Your Own

Author:Denzel Washington

“I think that most writers who are trying to write important and difficult books are in many ways putting their own humanity into question. Sometimes the journey is finding out where you stand in relationship to your own humanity and to the humanity of others.”

Thinking Way Writing Trying Important Book Sometimes Humanity Difficult Journey Findings Where You Stand

Author:Chris Abani

“I advised Chambers, and would advise every young man beginning to compose, to do it as fast as he can, to get a habit of having his mind to start promptly; it is so much more difficult to improve in speed than in accuracy.”

Men Writing Mind Young Difficult Habit Speed Young Man Chamber Advise Accuracy

Book:The Life of Samuel Johnson, LL. D.: Including a Journal of a Tour to the Hebrides

Source: The Life of Samuel Johnson, LL. D.: Including a Journal of a Tour to the Hebrides

“It is not difficult to conceive, however, that for many reasons a man writes much better than he lives. For without entering into refined speculations, it may be shown much easier to design than to perform. A man proposes his schemes of life in a state of abstraction and disengagement, exempt from the enticements of hope, the solicitations of affection, the importunities of appetite, or the depressions of fear.”

Source: The Rambler: A Periodical Paper, Published in 1750, 1751, 1752

“As a white male in America, I have privilege. As a white male who happens to be an artist with a fan base, I have a platform to spread awareness about that privilege. However, songs about race and privilege are very difficult to A) write and B) dissect as a listener. They're heavy.”

Writing Happens America Artist Song Difficult White Race Fans Awareness Males Privilege Heavy Spread Platforms Listeners

Author:Macklemore

“We write so many songs, it is difficult to narrow them down.”

Writing Song Difficult

Author:Miranda Lambert

“I never did write a biography, and I don't exactly know how to set about it; you see I have to be accurate and keep to the facts, a most difficult thing for a writer of fiction.”

Knows Writing Facts Difficult Fiction Know How Accurate Biographies Difficult Things

Book:The Life of Charlotte Brontë

Source: The Life of Charlotte Brontë

“Frankly, as much as I love to improvise, it hasn't been difficult to stick to the script on 'Mad Men.' The writing is so precise, and the story so carefully crafted, that I don't think there's room - or need - for ad libbing. I could never come up with dialogue as lovely as these writers do, anyway.”

Thinking Men Needs Writing Stories Difficult Rooms Mad Sticks Scripts Come Up Lovely Dialogue Ads Precise Mad Men

Author:Rich Sommer

“If I have something I want to say that is too difficult for adults to swallow, then I will write it in a book for children.”

Ifs Want Writing Children Book Literature Difficult Adults Children's Literature Children Book

Author:Madeleine L'Engle

“I'm fundamentally, I think, an outsider. I do my best work and feel most braced with my back to the wall. It's an odd feeling though, writing aginst the current: difficult entirely to disregard the current. Yet of course I shall.”

Thinking Feels Writing Feelings Courses Difficult Wall Currents Odd Outsiders Best Work Disregard

Book:Delphi Complete Works of Virginia Woolf (Illustrated)

Source: Delphi Complete Works of Virginia Woolf (Illustrated)

“Any one may mouth out a passage with a theatrical cadence, or get upon stilts to tell his thoughts; but to write or speak with propriety and simplicity is a more difficult task. Thus it is easy to affect a pompous style, to use a word twice as big as the thing you want to express; it is not so easy to pitch upon the very word that exactly fits it.”

Source: Delphi Collected Works of William Hazlitt (Illustrated)

“The longer one doesn't write, the more difficult it is to communicate.”

Writing Difficult Letters Communicate

Book:Indira Gandhi, letters to an American friend 1950-1984

Source: Indira Gandhi, letters to an American friend 1950-1984

“[On writing:] What a difficult kind of work to choose! But of course one did not choose it. There was no choice.”

Writing Kind Choices Courses Difficult

Author:Ivy Compton-Burnett

“It's difficult to write a really good short story because it must be a complete and finished reflection of life with only a few words to use as tools. There isn't time for bad writing in a short story.”

Writing Stories Use Difficult Reflection Tools Finished Short Story Few Words Bad Writing Reflections Of Life

Author:Edna Ferber

“For some reason there's this myth that creativity - [especially] in terms of creative writing - is a gift you either have, or you don't. So when people first start writing, if they write something that's not very good, or if they try and it's difficult, they go, "Oh, I guess I don't have it." That doesn't seem very fair, you have to try and you have to work at it. If we get scared of one bad poem and quit, that's not doing anybody any good.”

People Ifs Writing Trying Firsts Reason Seems Difficult Term Creativity Creative Fairs Very Good Scared Myth Quitting Creative Writing

Author:Sarah Kay

“Writing directly from a feeling of anger or sadness is difficult, but if you distract part of your brain with word games, the ignored emotion often tiptoes in.”

Ifs Writing Feelings Games Difficult Emotion Brain Sadness Ignored Tiptoes

Author:Matthea Harvey

“It is always difficult to get across to people who are not professional writers that a talent to write does not mean a talent to write anything at all.”

People Writing Mean Doe Difficult Talent

Book:Mystery and Manners: Occasional Prose

Source: Mystery and Manners: Occasional Prose

“It has seemed to me that literature, as I meant it, was embattled, that it was increasingly difficult to find writing doing what I thought literature should do - which was simply to push people into changing their ideas about the world, and to go further, to encourage us in the work of changing the world, to making it more just and more truly human.”

People World Should Writing Humans Ideas Literature Difficult Changing The World

Author:Dorothy Allison

“So many people seem to imagine that because the actual tools of writing are easily accessible, it is less difficult than the other arts. This is entirely an illusion.”

People Writing Art Seems Difficult Imagine Illusion Tools Imagine That

Book:On becoming a writer

Source: On becoming a writer

“There are some words I find impossibly difficult ... 'Love,' 'feeling' and especially 'happiness' are at the head of the list. This is not because I haven't experienced any of them but because whenever I think about using the words I don't really know what anyone means by them. I'd find it easier to sit down and write a book about each (coming, obviously, to no conclusion) than to use them casually in speech or writing.”

Thinking Knows Writing Mean Book Use Feelings Language Difficult Havens Easier Speech Down And Lists Conclusion Love Feeling

Author:Jenny Diski

“I write because, exacting as it may be to do so, it is still more difficult to refrain, and because - however conscious of one's limitations one may be - there is always at the back of one's mind an irrational hope that this next book will be different: it will be the rounded achievement, the complete fulfilment. It never has been: yet I am still writing.”

Writing Mind May Has Beens Stills Book Different Next Difficult Achievement Conscious Limitation Irrational Refrain Fulfilment

Author:Iris Origo