I think you might be misinterpreting what GP is saying by trimming the end of the quote; they're not saying that making something easier to read makes it harder to write, they're saying that making something easy to read but hard to write is a worthy goal.
Also, I think "hard to write" is meant as "require that critical or dangerous details are written explicitly; if a feature adds convenience for writing at the expense of reading, it should be avoided". (Type inference, overloads and reflection come to mind)
I think (hope) that no one is advocating making a language verbose or complex for it's own sake.
