Robert Cormier Quotes & Sayings

A writer must take risks, defy the odds, be a bit obsessed and a little mad. — Robert Cormier

Do I dare disturb the universe?
Yes, I do, I do. I think.
Jerry suddenly understood the poster
the solitary man on the beach standing upright and alone and unafraid, poised at the moment of making himself heard and known in the world, the universe. — Robert Cormier

They tell you to do your own thing but they don't mean it. They don't want you to do your thing, not unless it happens to be their thing, too. — Robert Cormier

My dream was to be known as a writer and to be able to produce at least one book that would be read by people. That dream came true with the publication of my first novel - and all the rest has been a sweet bonus. — Robert Cormier

Ray Bannister started to build the guillotine the day Jerry Renault returned to Monument. — Robert Cormier

I had my bully, and it was excruciating. Not only the bully, but the intimidation I felt. — Robert Cormier

Eat my heart
Chew it hard
Swallow my soul, too — Robert Cormier

Why did the wise guys always accuse other people of being wise guys? — Robert Cormier

Pain reaches a certain point and does not get worse but remains in all its intensity and you can survive it. — Robert Cormier

Archie became absolutely still, afraid that the rapid beating of his heart might betray his sudden knowledge, the proof of what he'd always suspected, not only of Brother Leon but most grownups, most adults: they were vulnerable, running scared, open to invasion. — Robert Cormier

I don't mean to be insolent. I'm truthful. I tell the truth and the truth sometimes hurts. For instance, you have bad breath, Lieutenant. I can smell it from here. It must offend a lot of people. That's the truth. But how many people have told you that? Instead, they either lie or try to avoid your company. — Robert Cormier

What could he say? After the phone calls and the beating. After the desecration of his locker. The silent treatment. Pushed downstairs. What they did to Goober, to Brother Eugene. What guys like Archie and Janza did to the school. What they would do to the world when they left Trinity. — Robert Cormier

He closed the locker quickly so no one would see the damage. For some reason, he felt ashamed. — Robert Cormier

I have lived a thousand lives lost within the pages of a book. — Robert Cormier

I have always pondered a tragic law of adolescence. (On second thought, the law probably applies to all ages to some extent). That law: People fall in love at the same time - often at the same stunning moment - but they fall out of love at different times. One is left sadly juggling the pieces of a fractured heart while the other has danced away. — Robert Cormier

He was intrigued by the power of words, not the literary words that filled the books in the library but the sharp, staccato words that went into the writing of news stories. Words that went for the jugular. Active verbs that danced and raced on the page. — Robert Cormier

It would be nice to avoid the world, to leave it and all its threats and unhappiness. Not to die or anything like that, but to find a place of solitude and solace. — Robert Cormier

Sometimes I wake up at night in a panic. Wondering: What will my life be like? And sometimes I even wonder: Who am I? What am I doing here, on this planet, in this city, in this house? And it gives me the shivers, makes me panic. — Robert Cormier

At some point in life, we learn our limitations, the distances we can we can travel and the boarders we will never cross. And we go from there. — Robert Cormier

I can't remember a time when I wasn't trying to get something down on paper. — Robert Cormier

It's amazing that the heart makes no noise when it cracks. — Robert Cormier

Nothing glamorous like the write-ups in the papers or the newsreels. We weren't heroes. We were only there ... — Robert Cormier

There are no taboos. Every topic is open, however shocking. It is the way that the topics are handled that's important, and that applies whether it is a 15-year-old who is reading your book or someone who is 55. — Robert Cormier

You see Carter, people are two things: greedy and cruel. So we have a perfect set-up here. The greed part - a kid pays a buck for a chance to win a hundred. Plus fifty boxes of chocolates. The cruel part - watching two guys hitting each other, maybe hurting each other, while they're safe in the bleachers. That's why it works, Carter, because we're all bastards. — Robert Cormier

A: Funny about my mother. All my life, from the time I was just a little kid, I thought of her as a sad person. I mean, the way some people are tall or fat or skinny. My father always seemed the stronger one. As if he was a bright color and she was a faded color. I know it sounds crazy.
T: Not at all.
A: But later, when I learned the truth about our lives, I found she was still sad. But strong, too. Not faded at all. It wasn't sadness so much as fear
the Never Knows. — Robert Cormier

A terrific sadness swept over Jerry. As if somebody had died. The way he felt standing in the cemetry that day they buried his mother. And nothing you could do about it. — Robert Cormier

We all start out with the same alphabet. We are all unique. Talent is not the most important thing
discipline and dedication are. Craft can be learned but desire and longing are innate. Despite the demands of school and just being young, try to write SOMETHING every day
a description, a captured emotion, a simile, a metaphor. Read, for crying out loud! A writer must read the way a ball player must go to the ballfield every day to practice. Everything is possible in this world of ours
and so's publication. — Robert Cormier

Eric Poole began with cats. Or, to be more exact, kittens. — Robert Cormier

I've had aunts and uncles who not only haven't read my books but could hardly believe that I was a writer. — Robert Cormier

That's what Archie did - built a house nobody could anticipate a need for, except himself, a house that was invisible to everyone else. — Robert Cormier

Pluck my heart
From my flesh
And eat it..... — Robert Cormier

There are moments that stop the heart, that catch the breath, that halt the beat of blood in your veins, and you are suspended in time, held between life and death, and you wait for something to bring you back again. — Robert Cormier

People throw the word love around like confetti when they actually mean affection. — Robert Cormier

All the stories I'll ever need are right here on Main Street. — Robert Cormier

They murdered him. — Robert Cormier

You seldom get a censorship attempt from a 14-year-old boy. It's the adults who get upset. — Robert Cormier

A smile for all the stupid people out there with bleeding hearts for serial killers. — Robert Cormier

A new sickness invaded Jerry, the sickness of knowing what he had become, another animal, another beast, another violent person in a violent world, inflicting damage, not disturbing the universe but damaging it. — Robert Cormier

It came to me that hell would not be fire and smoke after all but arctic, everything white and frigid. Hell would be not anger but indifference. — Robert Cormier

He hated to think of his own life stretching ahead of him that way, a long succession of days and nights that were fine - not good, not bad, not great, not lousy, not exciting, not anything. — Robert Cormier

Angry at his parents and all grown-ups who thought that school life was a lark, a good time, the best years of your life with a few test and quizzes thrown in to keep you on your toes. Bullshit. There was nothing good about it. Tests were daily battles in the larger war of school. School meant rules and orders and commands. To say nothing of homework. — Robert Cormier

My wife likes to say there are two kinds of people, those chasing pleasure and those running from pain. Maybe she's right, I don't know. What I do know is this: Pleasure helps you forget. But pain, pain forces you to hope. You tell yourself this can't last. Today could be different. Today something just might change. — Robert Cormier

You bring up your children to be self-reliant and independent and they double-cross you and become self-reliant and independent. — Robert Cormier

Cities fell. Earth opened. Planets tilted. Stars plummeted. And the awful silence. — Robert Cormier

They don't actually want you to do your own thing, not unless it's their thing too. — Robert Cormier

Everybody sins, Francis. The terrible thing is that we love our sins. We love the thing that makes us evil. — Robert Cormier

I take real people and put them in extraordinary situations. — Robert Cormier

I wonder if it's a special sin to lie to a nun — Robert Cormier

And he did see
that life was rotten, that there were no heroes, really, and that you couldn't trust anybody, not even yourself. — Robert Cormier

The possibility that hope comes out of hopelessness and that the opposite of things carry the seeds of birth - love out of hate, good out of evil. Didn't flowers grow out of dirt? — Robert Cormier

I have always had a sense that we are all pretty much alone in life, particularly in adolescence. — Robert Cormier

Don't miss the bus, boy. You're missing a lot of things in the world, better not miss that bus. — Robert Cormier

He looks at me fondly. I know that the look doesn't have love in it. Or even lust. I still wonder about love or sex or lust. I saw lust in his eyes when he looked at that girl on the sidewalk ... I love him, anyway. I love him because he's kind to me and he doesn't want my body, doesn't want to feel me or touch me, like all the others ... and maybe after a while he might look at me with more than fondness, will kiss me sweetly, tenderly. — Robert Cormier

I simply write with an intelligent reader in mind. I don't think about how old they are. — Robert Cormier

She didn't want to look ahead to the days and the months and the years with him. Here, now, in this room, it was all right, but later? Again, time couldn't stop. And she saw at last that time only stopped when you were dead ... Time was always moving and nothing could stay the same, everything was always changing, for better or for worse. And you had to change with time, with the seasons and the years, or you would be dead too, although your heart would continue to beat. — Robert Cormier

Happiness is a way of traveling and not a destination — Robert Cormier

When he ran, he even loved the pain, the hurt of the running, the burning in his lungs and the spasms that sometimes gripped his calves. He loved it because he knew he could endure the pain, and even go beyond it. He had never pushed himself to the limit but he felt all this reserve strength inside of him: more than strength actually - determination. And it sang in him as he ran, his heart pumping blood joyfully through his body. — Robert Cormier

The cheese stands alone
The cheese stands alone
Heigh-ho the merry-o
The cheese stands alone — Robert Cormier

Go get your bus, square boy. — Robert Cormier

Often he rose early in the morning, before anyone else, and poured himself liquid through the sunrise streets, and everything seemed beautiful, everything in its proper orbit, nothing impossible, the entire world attainable. — Robert Cormier

He was swept with a sadness, a sadness deep and penetrating, leaving him desolate like someone washed up on a beach, a lone survivor in a world full of strangers. — Robert Cormier

I'm weary of the battle. But a tired fighter can still be a fighter. — Robert Cormier

There was nothing more beautiful in the world than the sight of a teacher getting upset. — Robert Cormier

The beautiful part of writing is that you don't have to get it right the first time, unlike, say, a brain surgeon. — Robert Cormier

You could reason with someone who was halfway educated and appeal to his intelligence, but I felt helpless in the face of utter stupidity. — Robert Cormier

It doesn't matter how big the body, it's what you do with it. — Robert Cormier

Family life was wonderful. The streets were bleak. The playgrounds were bleak. But home was always warm. My mother and father had a great relationship. I always felt 'safe' there. — Robert Cormier