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

August 5, 2019June 5, 2026 1663

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

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

Clarence Budington Kelland

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

Sidney Sheldon

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

Lawrence Wray

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

William Shawn

Just don’t be boring!

Robert Liebmann

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

Editor: A person employed by a newspaper, whose business it is to separate the wheat from the chaff, and to see that the chaff is printed.

Elbert Hubbard

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

Thank your readers and the critics who praise you, and then ignore them. Write for the most intelligent, wittiest, wisest audience in the universe: Write to please yourself.

Harlan Ellison

You can always edit a bad page. You can’t edit a blank page.

Jodi Picoult

The first chapter sells the book; the last chapter sells the next book.

Mickey Spillane

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

You may be able to take a break from writing, but you won’t be able to take a break from being a writer.

Stephen Leigh

Writing a novel is like driving a car at night. You can only see as far as your headlights, but you can make the whole trip that way.

E. L. Doctorow

The road to ignorance is paved with good editors.

George Bernard Shaw

The fact is, I don’t know where my ideas come from. Nor does any writer. The only real answer is to drink way too much coffee and buy yourself a desk that doesn’t collapse when you beat your head against it.

Douglas Adams

No one can write decently who is distrustful of the reader’s intelligence or whose attitude is patronizing.

E. B. White

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

Tom Clancy

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

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