At present, escape is used to start a new text. Maybe pressing escape could bring up a menu of:

Restart this text. Continue to next text.

This would enable pausing whilst offering a useful option (to my mind).

This is gonna be implemented too, in the magical next big release. (Which is a little slow in the making since I'm on a holiday right now and not the kind that gives me loads of spare time.)

I am thinking of escape (or some other key) pausing, and while in paused mode you can press keys (esc, tab, space, whatever...) to do things like restart text, continue, go to next text, etc. How does that sound?

Sounds great. Now enjoy your holiday!