"A writer is somebody for whom writing is more difficult than it is for other people"
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Mann’s line lands like a quiet insult to the romantic myth of the “natural” genius. It flips the usual hierarchy: the real writer isn’t the person who pours out perfect sentences effortlessly, but the one for whom each paragraph is a minor ordeal. The sting is deliberate. By defining the writer through difficulty, Mann treats writing less as talent than as a particular kind of affliction - a temperament wired to notice problems other people can glide past.
The subtext is almost diagnostic: writers suffer from an excess of consciousness. They hear the false note, sense the cheap metaphor, worry the idea until it confesses its contradictions. That vigilance makes the act slower and more painful, but it’s also the source of whatever authority the work earns. Mann is suggesting that seriousness isn’t measured by output or swagger; it’s measured by the friction between thought and language.
Context matters. Mann came out of a German tradition that prized craft, form, and intellectual heft, and he wrote in an era when “the artist” was alternately sanctified and pathologized. His own novels are monuments to revision, irony, and moral complexity - books that feel engineered as much as inspired. So the aphorism doubles as self-portrait and warning: if writing feels easy, you may be writing around the hard truths rather than through them.
It’s also an ethical claim. Difficulty implies responsibility: the writer is the person who refuses to let language lie smoothly.
The subtext is almost diagnostic: writers suffer from an excess of consciousness. They hear the false note, sense the cheap metaphor, worry the idea until it confesses its contradictions. That vigilance makes the act slower and more painful, but it’s also the source of whatever authority the work earns. Mann is suggesting that seriousness isn’t measured by output or swagger; it’s measured by the friction between thought and language.
Context matters. Mann came out of a German tradition that prized craft, form, and intellectual heft, and he wrote in an era when “the artist” was alternately sanctified and pathologized. His own novels are monuments to revision, irony, and moral complexity - books that feel engineered as much as inspired. So the aphorism doubles as self-portrait and warning: if writing feels easy, you may be writing around the hard truths rather than through them.
It’s also an ethical claim. Difficulty implies responsibility: the writer is the person who refuses to let language lie smoothly.
Quote Details
| Topic | Writing |
|---|---|
| Source | Later attribution: Thomas Mann (Thomas Mann) modern compilation
Evidence: three decades 1942 a writer is somebody for whom writing is more difficult than it is for other people Other candidates (1) Educart CBSE Question Bank Class 12 English Core 2024-25 ... (Educart, 2024) compilation95.0% ... A writer is somebody for whom writing is more difficult than it is for other people . -Thomas Mann ( b ) If you w... |
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