
“Easy writing makes hard reading.”
As quoted in Paris Was Our Mistress (1947) by Samuel Putnam, p. 128
Cornell Chronicle interview (1999)
“Easy writing makes hard reading.”
As quoted in Paris Was Our Mistress (1947) by Samuel Putnam, p. 128
“Easy reading is damn hard writing.”
Also attributed to Ernest Hemingway and others; the earliest definite occurrence of this yet found in research for Wikiquote is by Maya Angelou, who stated it in Conversations With Maya Angelou (1989) edited by Jeffrey M. Elliot:
I think it's Alexander Pope who says, "Easy writing is damn hard reading," and vice versa, easy reading is damn hard writing
The statement she referred to is most probably:
You write with ease, to show your breeding,
But easy writing's curst hard reading
Clio's Protest, or the Picture Varnished (written 1771, published 1819) by Richard Brinsley Sheridan
Disputed
“You write with ease to show your breeding,
But easy writing's curst hard reading.”
Clio's Protest (1819).
“No efforts of mine could avail to make the book easy reading.”
Preface, p. x.
The Genetical Theory of Natural Selection (1930)
“I think that's easier to read. Pardon me. Less difficult to read.”
[199710120226.TAA06867@wall.org, 1997]
Usenet postings, 1997
Source: Henry Rios series of novels, The Death of Friends (1996), p.189
'Borgias on my mind'
Essays and reviews, Glued to the Box (1983)
“How easy it is to make people believe a lie, and [how] hard it is to undo that work again!”
Misquote: It's easier to fool people than to convince them that they have been fooled.
Source: Autobiography of Mark Twain, Vol. 2 (2013), p. 302