Writing is the hardest work in the world. I have been a bricklayer and a truck driver, and I tell you – as if you haven't been told a million times already – that writing is harder. Lonelier. And nobler and more enriching.

Let's face it, writing is hell.

It's not the writing part that's hard. What's hard is sitting down to write.

What keeps us from sitting down is Resistance.

As for writing, that's a cruel hard business. Unless you're very lucky it'll break your heart.

To write simply is as difficult as to be good.

Writing is hard for every last one of us… Coal mining is harder. Do you think miners stand around all day talking about how hard it is to mine for coal? They do not. They simply dig.

Easy reading is damn hard writing.

Remember this as a consolation in moments of despair. If you find that writing is hard, it's because it is hard. It's one of the hardest things that people do.

Writing is supposed to be difficult, agonizing, a dreadful exercise, a terrible occupation.

"I know it's hard to write, darling. But it's harder not to. The only way you'll find out if you "have it in you" is to get to work and see if you do."

Writing in English is like throwing mud at a wall.

The more you learn, the harder the lessons get.

All writing is difficult. The most you can hope for is a day when it goes reasonably easily. Plumbers don’t get plumber’s block, and doctors don’t get doctor’s block; why should writers be the only profession that gives a special name to the difficulty of working, and then expects sympathy for it?

...the demands of writing and of real life are not always similar.