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

August 5, 2019May 9, 2025 927

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 don’t care if a reader hates one of my stories, just as long as he finishes the book.

Roald Dahl

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

Easy reading is damn hard writing.

Nathaniel Hawthorne

There are three primal urges in human beings: Food, sex, and rewriting someone else’s play.

Romulus Linney

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

Raymond Chandler

Biography should be written by an acute enemy.

Arthur Balfour

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

Joseph Conrad

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

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

M. K. Simmons

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

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

Jim Morrison

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

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

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

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

Clarence Budington Kelland

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

Oscar Wilde

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

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

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

Christopher Hampton

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