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

August 5, 2019May 9, 2025 839

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

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

Steven Bochco

A writer is a world trapped in a person.

Victor Hugo

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

Edward Albee

Easy reading is damn hard writing.

Nathaniel Hawthorne

Reading and weeping opens the door to one’s heart, but writing and weeping opens the window to one’s soul.

M. K. Simmons

Socially, a journalist fits in somewhere between a whore and a bartender. But spiritually he stands beside Galileo. He knows the world is round.

Sherman Reilly Duffy

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

Mickey Spillane

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 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

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

Writing is not necessarily something to be ashamed of, but do it in private and wash your hands afterwards.

Robert A. Heinlein

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

Writing is the only thing that, when I do it, I don’t feel I should be doing something else.

Gloria Steinem

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

Clarence Budington Kelland

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

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

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

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

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