The key is to be a porcupineöhave a reputation for being difficult.

-Matthews, ChristopherJ
Advice for success in the political world. Quoted in Hedrick Smith The Power Game (1988).

Working for Warner Brothers was like fucking a porcupineöit's a hundred pricks against one.

-Mizner,Wilson
Quoted in David Niven Bring on the Empty Horses (1975).

To cite passages is to pull one quill from a porcupine.

-Moore, Marianne Craig
Quoted in Patricia C  Willis (ed)  The Complete Prose of Marianne Moore (1986).

Like giving dry birth to a porcupine.

-Simpson, Alan (Kooi)
  On the passage of immigration reform bill. In the Washingtonian, Mar.