Writers Block Quotes

“13 September. Again barely two pages. At first I thought my sorrow over the Austrian defeats and my anxiety for the future (anxiety that appears ridiculous to me at bottom, and base too) would prevent me from doing any writing. But that wasn’t it, it was only an apathy that forever comes back and forever has to be put down again. There is time enough for sorrow when I am not writing. The thoughts provoked in me by the war resemble my old worries over F. in the tormenting way in which they devour me from every direction. I can’t endure worry, and perhaps have been created expressly in order to die of it. When I shall have grown weak enough –it won’t take very long –the most trifling worry will perhaps suffice to rout me. In this prospect I can also see a possibility of postponing the disaster as long as possible.”
― Franz Kafka, Diaries, 1910-1923

“Hemingway once said that ‘there is nothing to writing, you just sit down at a typewriter and bleed.’ What Hemingway failed to mention is that bleeding is the easy part. To cut is what makes writing hard. Sitting down to write and hitting that first key or touching the tip of your pen to that blank sheet of paper - that’s the hard part. Once you start - once you spill that first bit of ink and let it bleed into the page, the rest takes care of itself. There’s nothing to it. You just sit there and bleed until it stops. It is not for this reason, but it’s still interesting and worth mentioning that the word ‘write’ comes from the Proto-Germanic word ‘writan,’ which literally meant to scratch, tear, or cut.”
― Sean Norris, Heaven and Hurricanes

“I would not call it a writer's block. A writer's block to me is a temporary thing. A month, you know, six weeks. This was more a writer's blockade. To me, this was very much like the Vietnam War. It was the same timetable, it was on the same schedule as the Vietnam War. I don't know how I got into it and I couldn't get out of it.”
― Fran Lebowitz

“Begin your new story on a blank page, and like lonely footprints along a snowy path, the rest will follow...”
― Nanette L. Avery

“A little writer's block can be a good thing. Your inner-literary critic's way of gently letting you know you're really stinking up the joint. You're off track. Lost in the weeds. Need to go back and rethink things. Sometimes it's simply a matter of temporarily writing yourself out. Yesterday's slow 'n' steady 3 hour, 600 word quota turned into a 5 hour, 2,000 word marathon. The tank's suddenly dry. Take a breather. Let your subconscious work its magic. The words will come.”
― Quentin R. Bufogle

“Writers have limits, I don't, I am not a writer. I am a dimension immeasurable - siphon all you want, I won't run dry.”
― Abhijit Naskar, The Centurion Sermon: Mental Por El Mundo

“Time is not running out. Ideas are not running out. You are just running out of patience.”
― Michael Bassey Johnson, Night of a Thousand Thoughts

“Write me a poem.
Write me several poems.
A muse me.”
― N'Zuri Za Austin

“Never a new idea or stirring thought came to me from without; and such as rose within me were, for the most part, miserably crushed at once, or doomed to sicken or fade away, because they could not see the light.”
― Anne Brontë, Agnes Grey

“The only cure for writer's block is writing.”
― Kaylin R. Boyd

“I am a poet in
search of inspiration.
But she is eluding me.
Do I wait for her
to come to me?”
― Avijeet Das

“When I torment myself a little too much for not working, I tell myself that I might just as well be dead and that then I would be working still less...”
― Emil M. Cioran, The Trouble With Being Born

“Martin was turned on by knowledge. In the 21st century, such people have been termed "sapiosexuals": those who consider intelligence the most sexually attractive feature. That was exactly what I was to Martin; this was what Martin Eden was.”
― Mariia Manko, Finding Martin Eden: Travels to Find Myself

“There are words and there are thoughts; and these two seem the same - but only one writes history.”
― Laura Chouette

“Where did it go? The deep contemplations and many-splendour reflections? The light-bulb moments and soul-soothing narrations? Have you ever wondered who carved out those obscure minuscule apertures that aided the iridescent ideas to escape and evade? You wrestle with the mighty yet obstinate pen to write, to pour out your sentiments, but it refuses to budge, refuses to act as an outlet to the buried feelings. If generous enough, the prolific pen would permit a gentle stroke or an indecipherable scribble. That melodrama and theatre of confusion is writer's block. It's imminent and inescapable. It steers you into solitary ruminations, where diamond-studded chaos echoes and fairy dust emptiness whispers.”
― Ruqayya Shaheed Khan

“What was the point of looking if you couldn't write about what you saw? What was the point of experiencing anything at all if you couldn't write about what you had experienced?”
― Karl Ove Knausgård, Min kamp 5

“My hand has stopped writing
There is no talk in my mouth.”
― Neal Stephenson, Snow Crash

“Why the constant rereading? Is it not obvious? Firstly, reading and rereading distract him from thinking about himself, from enumerating the reasons behind his self-imposed predicament, from dwelling on his endless plight. Secondly, he rereads to remind himself what truly good writing is, how it formidably contrasts with what he published. Perhaps he’ll finally learn something. To apply to what? To apply to nothing.”
― David Finkle, Keys to an Empty House

“Books are magical.
When you read a good book - magic happens.
And when you write one - you create opportunities for that magic to happen to innumerable people.”
― Victor Ghoshe

“Big reveal here: there is no such thing as writer’s block. There’s only laziness, fear, and overthinking. You’re just using the wrong part of your mind at that moment.”
― James Dowd, Write Dumb: Writing Better By Thinking Less

“Your charge through this stage of writing is just to think less and feel more. Do not worry, do not edit, do not plan ahead. Never use writer’s block as an excuse. The only way to do it is to do it. When you’re stuck, the only way through it is through it. Just keep going. Put words on the page, worry about them later. Stop overthinking it and write.”
― James Dowd, Write Dumb: Writing Better By Thinking Less

“My mind was as blank as it was every time I opened Microsoft Word.”
― Emily Henry, Beach Read

“Creativity is a well from which you draw to be refreshed and help refresh others. Sometimes you can’t visit it for a long time. Sometimes it runs low. The well will change throughout your life, but it’s always there.”
― Virgie Townsend

“Sometimes writing like having a plant that never gets watered and expecting it to blossom.”
― Nanette L. Avery

“You can't rush crazy, crazy has its own schedule.”
― Angus Curran, Mystery at Mesa Blanca: An adventure to solve a crime that time has forgotten.

“Make love to the music of life and the words will come.”
― Curtis Tyrone Jones

“I am never able to forget the possibility of block. Paradoxically, it drives my writing—compelling me to put aside everything else because of the possibility that today may be the last day I will ever be able to write. It’s another way writer’s block is sometimes not the opposite of hypergraphia but the cause. Perhaps writers could reclaim the concept of block as Saint Jerome in his study used a memento mori (a skull, or an hourglass with the sands of time slipping away) to drive his work, in those lovely Renaissance paintings”
― Alice W. Flaherty, The Midnight Disease: The Drive to Write, Writer's Block, and the Creative Brain

“Intense ruby hues and shadowy scents, exquisite notes of plum currant, sweet and full bodied tannins... an evening reminiscent of a pleasurable touch. Wine is so enigmatic that I can't help but feel enticed. Would a glass of this cure my writer's block or will I be rendered helpless and drown in sweet misery tonight?”
― Mystqx Skye

“Sonnet 1433

No such thing as an uncreative heart,
If you are alive, you are creative.
Unless cluttered by status quo,
Every heart is by nature creative.

Heart alive is heart creative,
Creativity is a sign of life.
Uncreativity is pulselessness,
Symptom of a heart anemic of life.

I am not creative, I'm just alive,
Creativity is just a byproduct.
If you don't impose limits of norm,
Every blood vessel is creation-duct.”
― Abhijit Naskar, Dervis Vadisi: 100 Promissory Sonnets

“When you experience writer's block, it means your creative child is throwing herself on the floor and refusing to cooperate. What do you do under these circumstances? Do you try to compel your child, kicking and screaming, to do what she would not? Do you send her to her room without dinner? Do you give her a number of logical reasons why she ought to
cooperate? Or do you try to find out why she doesn't want to in the first place?”
― Victoria Nelson, On Writer's Block