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

August 5, 2019May 9, 2025 1128

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

Work on a computer that is disconnected from the Internet.

Zadie Smith

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

A writer is a world trapped in a person.

Victor Hugo

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

Christopher Hampton

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

The road to ignorance is paved with good editors.

George Bernard Shaw

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

It always comes down to characters, and individual stories about courage.

Steven Bochco

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

Just don’t be boring!

Robert Liebmann

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

Stories are never too long or too short. They’re too interesting or too boring.

William Shawn

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

Stan Lee

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

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

Oscar Wilde

Do you know what a playwright is? A playwright is someone who lets his guts hang out on the stage.

Edward Albee

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

Stephen Wright

I do not over-intellectualize the production process. I try to keep it simple: Tell the damned story.

Tom Clancy

I write the last line, and then I write the line before that. I find myself writing backwards for a while, until I have a solid sense of how that ending sounds and feels. You have to know what your voice sounds like at the end of the story, because it tells you how to sound when you begin.