“As nothing is more easy than to think, so nothing is more difficult than to think well.”
Thomas Traherne (1636–1674) English poet
First Century, sect. 8.
Centuries of Meditations
The Autobiography of a Sexually Emancipated Communist Woman (1926)
Context: Nothing is more difficult than writing an autobiography. What should be emphasized? Just what is of general interest? It is advisable, above all, to write honestly and dispense with any of the conventional introductory protestations of modesty. For if one is called upon to tell about one's life so as to make the events that made it what it became useful to the general public, it can mean only that one must have already wrought something positive in life, accomplished a task that people recognize. Accordingly it is a matter of forgetting that one is writing about oneself, of making an effort to abjure one's ego so as to give an account, as objectively as possible, of one's life in the making and of one's accomplishments.
“As nothing is more easy than to think, so nothing is more difficult than to think well.”
Thomas Traherne (1636–1674) English poet
First Century, sect. 8.
Centuries of Meditations
“Nothing in this world was more difficult than love.”
Gabriel García Márquez (1927–2014) Colombian writer
Groucho Marx (1890–1977) American comedian
Just after completing his second autobiography, as quoted in The Marx Brothers: A Bio-bibliography (1987) by Wes D. Gehring, p. 137
“A writer is somebody for whom writing is more difficult than it is for other people.”
Thomas Mann (1875–1955) German novelist, and 1929 Nobel Prize laureate
Source: Essays of Three Decades (1942)
“Writing is nothing more than a guided dream.”
Jorge Luis Borges (1899–1986) Argentine short-story writer, essayist, poet and translator, and a key figure in Spanish language literature
Preface to Dr. Brodie's Report [El informe de Brodie] (1970)
“Every artist writes his own autobiography.”
H. Havelock Ellis (1859–1939) British physician, writer, and social reformer
The New Spirit
“There is nothing more difficult than waking someone who is only pretending to be asleep.”
Desmond Tutu (1931) South African churchman, politician, archbishop, Nobel Prize winner
Norman Mailer (1923–2007) American novelist, journalist, essayist, playwright, film maker, actor and political candidate
Superman Comes to the Supermarket http://www.esquire.com/news-politics/a3858/superman-supermarket/ (November 1960) <br class="br">Superman Comes to the Supermarket (1960)