Top 100 Hard To Write Quotes
#1. Thinking about writing isn't writing. Planning to write isn't writing. Neither is talking about it, posting about it, or complaining how hard it is. These may be part of the process. But only writing is writing.
Jack Ketchum
#2. Anyone who has a choice and doesn't choose to write is a fool. The work is hard, the perks are few, the pay is terrible, and the product, when it's finally finished, is pure joy.
Mary Lee Settle
#3. It has taken me years of struggle, hard work, and research to learn to make one simple gesture, and I know enough about the art of writing to realize that it would take as many years of concentrated effort to write one simple, beautiful sentence.
Isadora Duncan
#4. I had wanted to write English crime novels based on the American hard-boiled style, and for the first two novels about Brixton, the critics didn't actually know I was Irish.
Ken Bruen
#5. It's really hard when people write nasty things about you all the time. As much as good things are said about you, it's always those one or two bad comments that really stay with you and gnaw at you. I try not to read that stuff if I can.
Jordin Sparks
#6. You can write and visualize goals all you want, but if you do not take action, your goals will never become a reality. To obtain a goal you have never before achieved will require tasks you have never before done.
Cameron C. Taylor
#7. We go to school to learn to work hard for money. I write books and create products that teach people how to have money work hard for them.
Robert Kiyosaki
#8. It is hard to write it in words that I can read, that re-establishes the fact that has been haunting me for the past one year.
Kudrat Dutta Chaudhary
#9. I write slowly, and I write many, many drafts. I probably have to work as hard as anyone, and maybe harder, to finish a poem. I often write a poem over years, because it takes me a long time to figure out what to say and how best to say it.
Philip Schultz
#10. It would probably take me an hour to two to write it down, get the feel of it, and that's with quite a few changes. It's not really a hard thing for me to do.
Ben E. King
#11. I think it's hard to really write a song that will educate someone because songs are meant to be ... you don't want to be too didactic in a song because it doesn't make for good music. And I think the role of songs can be to inspire people but there needs to education and prose to back that up.
John Legend
#12. When people ask that question, it's very hard to nail down a formula or a circumstance that I always write in, but I definitely do believe that there have been moments, musically, when I have channeled something, you know?
Kimbra
#13. I think I have a hard time expressing myself in my relationships. I use songs to tell people how I'm feeling. If I can't say 'I love you,' I'll write a song about it and hope that the person figures it out.
Jenny Lewis
#14. If you don't allow yourself the possibility of writing something very, very bad, it would be hard to write something very good.
Steven Galloway
#15. I think it is going to be hard for individual OEMs to create a platform on top of which people will write content and services and which users will transact.
Sundar Pichai
#17. I write novels, mostly historical ones, and I try hard to keep them accurate as to historical facts, milieu and flavor.
Gary Jennings
#18. I read my own books sometimes to cheer me when it is hard to write, and then I remember that it was always difficult, and how nearly impossible it was sometimes.
Ernest Hemingway,
#19. I have to laugh to myself. I don't find it work to write music, because I enjoy it. I'd find an evening of bridge hard work because you have to think like hell, and at the end, you get nothing for it.
Richard Rodgers
#20. Evolution loves death more than it loves you or me. This is easy to write, easy to read, and hard to believe.
Annie Dillard
#21. The only thing that's helped me get through some really hard times was just being able to write and express - it's very cathartic for me. I'm hoping that, by writing and performing for other people, it affects them the same way.
Sharon Van Etten
#22. It's so easy to write songs about misery and hard times and sadness. It's much more difficult to write songs about happy and chirpy stuff.
Elton John
#23. I think it's really hard to make songs that pursue an agenda. You can kind of do it a little bit through a character, so the character gives voice to something or their story, the story of the character tells you something, but, for me anyway, it's really hard to write directly about politics.
David Byrne
#24. I ended up at fifty, over-the-hill, thinking I had no future. Finally, I realized that I had allowed myself to write less than I could ... As writers true to ourselves, it will always be hard, and if we're good, we'll always be in trouble. Let's be sure we deserve it.
Waldo Salt
#25. There are two places that are hard to write about. A place like Britain, England in particular, which has been written about by everybody, and then the place that's never been written about.
Paul Theroux
#26. To try and imagine that I'm another person is always going to be hard - whether I'm writing about a truck driver or someone who is gay, who's trans, who is of a different ethnicity or creed. But it would be boring if I always had to write about myself and my limited viewpoint.
Brian K. Vaughan
#28. When I have something to say that's particularly hard to say, I often write it down first.
Cheryl Strayed
#30. I can't recommend technical writing as a day job for fiction writers because it's going to be hard to write all day and then come home and write fiction.
Ted Chiang
#31. Personal finance is a means to an end - living a rich and fulfilling life. It is not hard. It is not complicated. I write this to share simple truths I've learned from some very wise people.
Rick Van Ness
#32. I hardly remember how I started to write poetry. It's hard to imagine what I thought poetry could do.
David Antin
#33. I think it's very, very, very hard to get a book published. I never want to be one of those teachers that say, 'don't do this, ' because how sad would the world be if people didn't create art and write? But, it's not an easy journey being a writer.
Alyson Richman
#34. The desire to write well can never be fulfilled without hard work.
Dean Koontz
#35. You can't really discover the most interesting conflicts and problems in a subject until you've tried to write about them. At that point, one discovers discontinuities in the data, perhaps, or in one's own thinking; then the act of writing forces you to work harder to resolve these contradictions.
Anthony F. C. Wallace
#36. Usually I'm pretty myopic. It's hard for me to multi-task, so to speak. If I'm in a show and I'm creating a character, I'm just completely into that. It's really hard for me to do anything else like write music. I have to sort of shut down different sides of my head and just focus.
Idina Menzel
#37. When you make a melody that doesn't come with words from the get-go, sometimes you're just thinking about random vowel sounds that go with it - and it's really, really hard to write lyrics that actually obey the vowel sounds.
David Longstreth
#38. I really try to write every day. It's hard, but it's my favorite thing to do, so it's usually not too, too hard.
Karen Russell
#39. I'm a better writer now because I've worked very hard at getting better. My long-range goal will always be to write better books.
George Pelecanos
#40. I know that to write you have to have stories you want to tell. You have to keep your mind alive, and you have to work hard.
Tracy Kidder
#41. If you don't care about science enough to be interested in it on its own, you shouldn't try to write hard science fiction. You can write like Ray Bradbury and Harlan Ellison as much as you want.
Frederik Pohl
#42. There's a secret that real writers know that wannabe writers don't, and the secret is this: It's not the writing part that's hard. What's hard is sitting down to write. What
Steven Pressfield
#43. But the explanations fell apart in her hands. Everything true was too hard to write
he was too much to lose. Everything she felt for him was too hot to touch.
Rainbow Rowell
#44. When I moved to Los Angeles, I wrote spec screenplays. I was really poor, and I thought I was just gonna do this for a while to make a little money so I could write novels. I thought movies were a second-class art form. I condescended to it - I didn't know enough to know it was really gonna be hard.
Stephen Gaghan
#45. Any play is hard to write, and plays are getting harder and harder to get on the stage.
Alan Alda
#46. I worked hard at my four-year M.A., but got a 2.1. That was a big disappointment, as I wanted to write about history and thought I needed a First.
Saul David
#47. When he got a story urge, there was nothing to do but grab a pen and write. Otherwise it was too much like getting a hard-on and not jerking off.
Paul Russell
#48. It's so damn hard to write a great historical mystery based on fact. It's not for lack of trying.
Jon Turteltaub
#49. Beginning a novel is always hard. It feels like going nowhere. I always have to write at least 100 pages that go into the trashcan before it finally begins to work. It's discouraging, but necessary to write those pages. I try to consider them pages -100 to zero of the novel.
Barbara Kingsolver
#50. It's hard for children's authors to be accepted when they try to write adult books. J.K. Rowling is the exception because people are so eager to read anything by her, but it took Judy Blume three or four tries before she had a success.
R.L. Stine
#51. Just do it. Get it down on the page. Work hard. And then let go. Ask yourself why you want to write. You have to be clear about that.
Yann Martel
#52. The better you know something, the less you remember about how hard it was to learn. The curse of knowledge is the single best explanation I know of why good people write bad prose.
Steven Pinker
#53. I always wanted to write. While I was on a long surf trip, supporting myself with various day jobs, I was working hard on a novel. My third novel, in fact.
William Finnegan
#54. When we write, we pour ourselves on the page. It's hard for an author to hide himself
Bangambiki Habyarimana
#55. It is also hard to write about a city we just moved to; it's not yet in our body.
Natalie Goldberg
#56. 'An Unquiet Mind' wasn't hard to write in terms of the actual writing of it.
Kay Redfield Jamison
#57. I love Lady Antebellum and Miranda Lambert - they write from the heart. But it's hard to find a country music lover in L.A. None of my friends really listen to it, and they hate getting in the car with me because I just blast Taylor Swift.
Lucy Hale
#58. In 1970, at the age of 14, I entered a short story contest offering a grand prize of one dollar. I won. This was my first foray into writing fiction. I loved reading and thought that it shouldn't be so hard to write a story.
David Bergen
#59. It's hard for me to think of what happened next, let alone write it down, but I must, if only as a warning for anyone else who contemplates some similar experiment in damnation, and may read these words, and turn back because of them.
Stephen King
#60. I'm pretty social so it's hard for me to find solitude, but I need to have solitude to write.
Catie Curtis
#61. You have to relax, write what you write. It sounds easy but it's really, really hard. One of the things it took me longest to learn was to trust the writing process.
Diane Setterfield
#62. I wish I could write more make-believe. It's a lot easier to write about hard times and when things are going wrong. But I've never been a private person.
Gwen Stefani
#63. No one writes to make money. Authors write stories to fill the world with imagination for those who have a hard time finding their own.
S.L. Perrine
#64. Writing in the dark is hard, but you have to light your own candle and do it anyway.
A.D. Posey
#65. It's hard to make a living as a novelist. My first novel 'Tapping the Source' made quite a splash in Hollywood, and people started asking if I wanted to write scripts. I quickly realized I could make a lot more money that way.
Kem Nunn
#66. Writing is such a weird emotional thing. It's hard. If you sit down with a plan to write something, it's going to be harder.
Lauren Miller
#67. Unlike many other places, Hilo is more fascinating on closer acquaintance - so fascinating that it is hard to write about it in plain prose.
Isabella Bird
#68. It is hard to write about politicians, see them at such close range, and still think of any of them as heroes.
Robert Novak
#69. We're in a world where there's famine and hunger and people are dodging bullets and having their nails pulled out in dungeons so it's very hard for me to place any high value on the work that I do to write a song. Yeah, I work hard but compared to what?
Leonard Cohen
#70. She was trying to write a novel, it was so slow, you had to destroy so much and start again; so hard to discover whether one was really a writer or just a victim of a literary home environment.
John Fowles
#71. I definitely fall in love quickly, and I'm very in love with being in love. But it is hard for me to write about love.
Melanie Martinez
#72. I want to suggest that to write to your best abilities, it behooves you to construct your own toolbox and then build up enough muscle so you can carry it with you. Then, instead of looking at a hard job and getting discouraged, you will perhaps seize the correct tool and get immediately to work.
Stephen King
#73. It's hard for me to speak, whether in English or Afrikaans. The reason I write is because I cannot speak. I feel blunt.
Antjie Krog
#74. 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.
Cheryl Strayed
#75. The epistolary form is one of the hardest to write. It's so hard to show something that's bigger in a letter. Plus, you have to have the balance of how many letters are going to work to tell the story and how few are going to make it fall apart.
Jacqueline Woodson
#76. I think of myself first as a singer, meaning an interpreter. Then I think of myself as a writer. It is an outlet I have to have. I get very hard to live with without something happening to write about.
Oliver
#77. I've only been to jail a few times, but in several different countries, at that. No, I've only been to jail a few times. But I still claim the ability to write a "serious" novel.
Roman Payne
#78. I wish other people would write about loneliness more. It's hard to remember that it's not personal. We live in a world that is built to make people lonely ... It's difficult to remember that your loneliness is not really about you and everyone has it.
Jessa Crispin
#79. Fiction is about human beings, first and foremost. (It's not impossible to write fiction with no human protagonists, but it's very hard to keep the reader interested ... )
Charles Stross
#80. I worked as hard to write the worst film of the year as I did to write the best film of the year.
Brian Helgeland
#81. Titles are very hard. Sometimes a title comes before I start to write the book, but often I finish the book, and I still don't have a title. I have to go through the book again, and then sometimes I hope a title jumps out at me from what I've written.
Eve Bunting
#82. Writing is very hard mostly because until you try to write something down, it's easy to fool yourself into believing you understand things. Writing is terrible for vanity and self-delusion.
Mark Vonnegut
#83. There's no big splashy renaissance in Italian films. We have good young actors and directors. What we lack are screenwriters. It's hard to write about Italy.
Valeria Golino
#84. Do you have any idea how hard a story is to write? My brain is jumpy, and my heart doesn't know where to live. Is Male is such an imperfect narrator, but he will try to finish his tale.
Jenny Hubbard
#85. Oh, southern rappers ... so hard to write a rhyme when you only know 30 words.
Daniel Tosh
#86. I'm trying to use people like Meredith Monk and Philip Glass and Terry Riley as the backing tracks for new pop songs. It's really hard trying to use the format and write a pop song on top of avant-garde music, so we'll see. It could be cool, or it could totally flop.
Autre Ne Veut
#87. 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.
Steven Pressfield
#88. I want people who write to crash or dive below the surface, where life is so cold and confusing and hard to see.
Your anger and damage and grief are the way to the truth.
Anne Lamott
#89. It's difficult to teach how to write novels, but teaching swimming is just as hard.
Haruki Murakami
#90. It is hard for anyone who discovers George Washington not to write about him, perhaps because he is so hard to discover and such a surprise when you do.
Edmund Morgan
#91. It's very hard to write about that which is always beautiful and pleasant and good. You don't get anywhere with it. There's no friction in it. There's no trouble. You have to have trouble. Somebody's got to get in trouble, or no one wants to read it.
Paul Bowles
#92. I am trying to write stuff that is different. I am a big science fan. I read a lot of science, and 'Wonderland' has a lot of science in it. I don't know. They are hard to describe ... We are living in a wonderland age of science.
Bob Seger
#93. It really isn't hard to write a book that prohibits sexual slavery - you just put in a few lines like "Don't take sex slaves!" and "When you fight a war and take prisoners, as you inevitably will, don't rape any of them!" And yet God couldn't seem to manage it.
Sam Harris
#94. I like to write and draw and paint, and my mom's an artist, so I think I get caught up in thinking, 'I'm afraid it's gonna be bad,' and it's hard for me to start sometimes.
Kristen Wiig
#95. It's so hard to write about countries like Haiti because there's truths behind the misperceptions people have. But there's so much more. There are multiple truths.
Roxane Gay
#96. I sometimes try to write something that is actually really simple and I can't do it. So, then, it's not simple anymore. It's really hard and it gets all messed up. I sometimes sit down and try to write a song with just three chords and it doesn't work.
Sondre Lerche
#97. but when i write, i feel like the most important man in the world, because when i write, i give meaning to things. i create significance, and i create meanings, and as hard as that may for you to believe, that's really even more important in the long run than life and death.
Elliot Mabeuse
#98. For me, it's very easy to write a horror movie that's just a succession of scary sequences, but it's hard to find horror movies that have a genuine theme to them that are really exploring some aspect of our psychology and our fears.
Ehren Kruger
#99. It's easy to write a good column if you've got good information. It's hard if you have to depend on style alone. I suppose there are people who can get away with styling on a regular basis. I'm not one of them. You're probably not, either.
Allan Sloan
#100. I'm not conscious of my own themes as I write first drafts, no, and in fact, I work hard to stay in that unconscious space and not ask myself what the novel is about or what my metaphors might mean because then, I think, you're just dead in the water.
Laurie Foos
Famous Authors
Popular Topics
Scroll to Top
