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

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

August 5, 2019July 21, 2023 575

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

What I loved most about calling myself a reporter was that it gave me an excuse to show up anyplace.

Jeanette Walls

Easy reading is damn hard writing.

Nathaniel Hawthorne

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

Steven Bochco

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

Oscar Wilde

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

Thomas Wolfe

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

Read a thousand books and your words will flow like a river.

Lisa See

Work on a computer that is disconnected from the Internet.

Zadie Smith

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

Just don’t be boring!

Robert Liebmann

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

M. K. Simmons

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

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

William Shawn

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 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

When writing a novel, that’s pretty much entirely what life turns into: “House burned down. Car stolen. Cat exploded. Did 1,500 easy words, so all in all it was a pretty good day.”

Neil Gaiman

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

Joseph Conrad

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

Romulus Linney

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

Jodi Picoult

If the sex scene doesn’t make you want to do it — whatever it is they’re doing — it hasn’t been written right.