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

August 5, 2019May 9, 2025 778

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

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

Oscar Wilde

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

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

Dan Poynter

A true author, no matter the medium, is an artist with godlike knowledge of his subject, and the proof of his authorship is that his pages smack of authority.

Robert McKee

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.

J.K. Rowling

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

Matthew Arnold

A writer without interest or sympathy for the foibles of his fellow man is not conceivable as a writer.

Joseph Conrad

Writing has laws of perspective, of light and shade, just as painting does, or music. If you are born knowing them, fine. If not, learn them. Then rearrange the rules to suit yourself.

Truman Capote Quote

In Hollywood, the woods are full of people that learned to write but evidently can’t read. If they could read their stuff, they’d stop writing.

Will Rogers

A writer is a world trapped in a person.

Victor Hugo

Everybody walks past a thousand story ideas every day. The good writers are the ones who see five or six of them. Most people don’t see any.

Orson Scott Card

If you haven’t got an idea, start a story anyway. You can always throw it away, and maybe by the time you get to the fourth page you will have an idea, and you’ll only have to throw away the first three pages.

William C. Gault

I get up in the morning, torture a typewriter until it screams, then stop.

Clarence Budington Kelland

No writer has ever yet been known to hang himself as long as he had another chapter left.

Thomas Wolfe

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

Raymond Chandler

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

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

G.K. Chesterton

The reason 99% of all stories written are not bought by editors is very simple. Editors never buy manuscripts that are left on the closet shelf at home.

John Campbell

If you start with a bang, you won’t end with a whimper.

T.S. Eliot

I’m writing a book. I’ve got the page numbers done.