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...

It is perfectly okay to write garbage — as long as you edit brilliantly.

C. J. Cherryh

Writers aren’t people exactly. Or, if they’re any good, they’re a whole lot of people trying so hard to be one person.

F. Scott Fitzgerald

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 have an idea that you genuinely think is good, don’t let some idiot talk you out of it.

Stan Lee

The most valuable of all talents is that of never using two words when one will do.

Thomas Jefferson

Biography should be written by an acute enemy.

Arthur Balfour

Substitute “damn” every time you’re inclined to write “very”; your editor will delete it and the writing will be just as it should be.

Mark Twain

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

Stephen King

Every writer with half a brain knows to surround himself or herself with editors who are smarter, far more articulate and infinitely better looking.

Chris Claremont

To me, movies and music go hand in hand. When I’m writing a script, one of the first things I do is find the music I’m going to play for the opening sequence.

Quentin Tarantino

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

Matthew Arnold

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

Christopher Hampton

My own experience is that once a story has been written, one has to cross out the beginning and the end. It is there that we authors do most of our lying.

Anton Chekhov

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

Don’t annoy an author, you’ll end up in their book and you won’t look good.

Lawrence Wray

If my poetry aims to achieve anything, it’s to deliver people from the limited ways in which they see and feel.

Jim Morrison

A writer is a world trapped in a person.

Victor Hugo

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

Keep a small can of WD-40 on your desk — away from any open flames — to remind yourself that if you don’t write daily, you will get rusty.

George Singleton

I haven’t got 10 rules that guarantee success, though I promise I’d share them if I did. The truth is that I found success by stumbling off alone in a direction most people thought was a dead end, breaking all the 1990s shibboleths about children’s books in the process.