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

on reading - gustave flaubert

You forget everything. The hours slip by. You travel in your chair through
centuries you seem seem to see before you, your thoughts are caught up in
the story, dallying with the details or following the course of the plot, you
enter into characters, so that it seems as if it were your own heart beating
beneath their costumes.

- Gustave Flaubert, Madame Bovary

By Olaf Hajek