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

August 5, 2019June 5, 2026 1406

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

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

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

Steven Bochco

It begins with a character, usually, and once he stands up on his feet and begins to move, all I can do is trot along behind him with a paper and pencil, trying to keep up long enough to put down what he says and does.

William Faulkner

It took me fifteen years to discover I had no talent for writing, but I couldn’t give it up because by that time I was too famous.

Robert Benchley

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

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

Jim Morrison

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

E. B. White

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

M. K. Simmons

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

Edward Albee

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

T.S. Eliot

Biography should be written by an acute enemy.

Arthur Balfour

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

Roald Dahl

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

Jodi Picoult

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

Thomas Wolfe

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

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

Tom Clancy

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

Stan Lee

Work on a computer that is disconnected from the Internet.

Zadie Smith

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.