You’ve heard of writer’s block. But have you heard of reader’s block?

05 Aug, 2019

I found this in the August 2nd, 2019, New York Times. Fun reading...if you're not suffering from reader's block: Reader's block article

You’ve heard of writer’s block. But have you heard of reader’s block?

August 5, 2019May 9, 2025

I found this in the August 2nd, 2019, New York Times. Fun reading…if you’re not suffering from reader’s block: Read More...

Have something to say, and say it as clearly as you can. That is the only secret.

Matthew Arnold

A good novel tells us the truth about its hero; but a bad novel tells us the truth about its author.

G.K. Chesterton

Anecdotes don’t make good stories. Generally, I dig down underneath them so far that the story that finally comes out is not what people thought their anecdotes were about.

Alice Munro

Plot is, I think, the good writer’s last resort and the dullard’s first choice.

Stephen King

Books aren’t written, they’re rewritten. Including your own. It is one of the hardest things to accept, especially after the seventh rewrite hasn’t quite done it.

Michael Crichton

It took me fifteen years to discover I had no talent for writing, but I couldn’t give it up because by that time I was too famous.

Robert Benchley

It is only natural to pattern yourself after someone. But you can’t just copy someone. If you like someone’s work, the important thing is to be exposed to everything that person has been exposed to.

Bob Dylan

If one cannot enjoy reading a book over and over again, there is no use in reading it at all.

Oscar Wilde

Ever heard of a carpenter not going to work because he has “carpenter’s block”? If a writer can’t write, it’s because he doesn’t really want to, he isn’t ready to get it on paper or he’s just plain lazy.

Chet Cunningham

Do not place a photograph of your favorite author on your desk, especially if the author is one of the famous ones who committed suicide.

Roddy Doyle

If the sex scene doesn’t make you want to do it — whatever it is they’re doing — it hasn’t been written right.

Sloan Wilson

If you wait for inspiration to write, you’re not a writer. You’re a waiter.

Dan Poynter

There are three primal urges in human beings: Food, sex, and rewriting someone else’s play.

Romulus Linney

It’s an accepted fact that all writers are crazy; even the normal ones are weird.

William Goldman

Critics are people who sit on the mountaintop and look down on the battlefield. When the fighting is finished, they take it upon themselves to come down from the mountain and shoot the survivors.

Robert Altman

The character that lasts is an ordinary guy with some extraordinary qualities.

Raymond Chandler

A blank piece of paper is God’s way of telling us how hard it to be God.

Sidney Sheldon

I have long felt that any reviewer who expresses rage and loathing for a novel is preposterous. He or she is like a person who has just put on full armor and attacked a hot fudge sundae or banana split.

Kurt Vonnegut, Jr

I have a structured songwriting process. I start with the music and try to come up with musical ideas, then the melody, then the hook, and the lyrics come last.

John Legend

Asking a working writer what he thinks about critics is like asking a lamppost how it feels about dogs.