on writing... difficulty

I am irritated by my own writing. I am like a violinist whose ear
is true, but whose fingers refuse to reproduce precisely the sound
he hears within.  - Gustave Flaubert

Writing is not a genteel profession. It's quite nasty and tough and
kind of dirty.  - Rosemary Mahoney

A writer is a person for whom writing is more difficult than it is
for other people.  - Thomas Mann

From Becoming Jane

When a novel is going well, I am Chipper and Glee and Want to
Talk to Everyone. When it isn’t, I can’t bear any kind of
communication that isn’t between me and the book. I think this
book and I are finally starting to get along, and my chest is
starting to feel less heavy about anything involving typing.
- Catherynne M. Valente

Writing a book is a long, exhausting struggle, like a long bout
of some painful illness. One would never undertake such a thing
if one were not driven by some demon whom one can neither
resist nor understand.  - George Orwell

Follow the path of your aroused thought, and you will soon meet
this infernal inscription: There is nothing so beautiful as that
which does not exist.  - Paul Valery

I was working on the proof of one of my poems all the morning,
and took out a comma. In the afternoon I put it back again.
- Oscar Wilde

I get up in the morning, torture a typewriter until it screams,
then stop.  - Clarence Budington Kelland

When we read, we stat at the beginning and continue until we
reach the end. When we write, we start in the middle and fight
our way out.  - Vickie Karp