In all honesty I think people make it far more difficult for themselves than it needs to be. Personally I don't remember the actual clearance given, what I do is watch the chart as they're giving me a clearance and mentally follow along that path and then read back the path, if there is a runway and I haven't been given clearance then I'm imagining myself getting to that runway and stopping and thusly my readback will be that, also means that I've given the actual route some thought as opposed to a bunch of numbers and letters that have been given to me.