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

Someone had bashed his head in, perhaps to put him out of his misery, but more likely to keep him from coming back as a zombie. — Andrew 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

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

I didn't smoke often, and had never smoked before the apocalypse, but now I had more pressing health issues to worry about. — Andrew 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

I declare this man a saint! — Andrew 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

Work ethic, confidence, a laser focus and commitment to accomplish a goal that most people can never imagine. — Daniel Cormier

His leg split like a piece of lumber being hit with an awl. — Andrew 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

My name is one best whispered in terror in a dark corner. — Andrew 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

You train, you fight, you show respect at the end of it. — Daniel 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

I feel good because it's my first finish in UFC. Training camp was long and hard and I prepared for a long fight but I have no complaints. I'm going to stay in this cycle and be this healthy in every camp. I feel great with this nutrition and the way my body has reacted to it. I'm firing on all cylinders. I've been talking about this move down for a long time and when you do it the right way you don't feel any effects. I don't want to make this harder than it needs to be. I've got great coaches and I know I haven't peaked yet. I'm going to keep getting better and I'm taking on all comers. — Daniel Cormier

We take the most difficult relationship of our childhood... and we MARRY it. — Rick Cormier

At first, many people infected with the zombie virus experienced similar symptoms to Ebola. — Andrew Cormier

One of my favorite authors is Robert Cormier. He was a devout Catholic and a very nice man, which might not be the impression you get from reading his books. — Sara Zarr

I don't want to lose ever. I don't want to lose at anything. I want to make weight faster than the guy that I'm fighting if we both go into the sauna at the same time. When we're doing interviews I want to have quicker wit so that I can make him feel stupid. I want to drink my water faster. And then when we get in the cage I want to beat him up. I don't think people really truly understand the extent that I go to try not to use. — Daniel Cormier

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

It had initially been thought that the zombie virus was an offshoot of Ebola. Many zombie-virus symptoms mimicked the terrible, hemorrhagic fever. — Andrew Cormier

One of my biggest assets is my ability to focus on something and go out and get it, but it's one of my biggest weaknesses too. — Daniel 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

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

Three things make up who we are as individuals: what we think, what we feel, and what we do. If we manage to change any one of these three aspects of ourselves, the other two will follow. — Rick Cormier

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

If people realized the great pains I go through to impose such delicious torment on him, they would be more punctilious. — Andrew Cormier

Love was supposed to move mountains, to make the world go round, to be all you need, but it fell
apart at the details. It couldn't save a single child-not the ones who'd gone to Sterling High that day,
expecting the normal; not Josie Cormier; certainly not Peter. So what was the recipe? Was it love,
mixed with something else for good measure? Luck? Hope? Forgiveness? — Jodi Picoult

I stuck one of my backpack straps into my mouth and bit down on it. I knew that no matter what I did, my attempt at playing doctor was going to f**king hurt, but I didn't feel like dying here. — Andrew 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

The world was left in complete devastation but I ruled most of what remained — Andrew Cormier

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

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

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

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

No matter how bad things get, eventually the sun is going to shine. If you just keep at it, pursuing your goals, eventually good things happen to decent people. For a person who is set on his goals, good things will happen. Everyone deals with adversity, it's how you bounce back from it. — Daniel Cormier

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

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

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

CULTIVATE THE GOOD WITHIN — William H. 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

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

With no music to listen to, I just biked around in circles talking to myself like a kid on the cover of a Robert Cormier young adult novel, circling around puzzled Jewish families walking back to their cars. This is how I learned to ride a bike. — Mindy Kaling

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

Go get your bus, square boy. — Robert Cormier

Love is how you treat someone. — Rick Cormier

In order to create a new world, we must first destroy the old one. — Andrew Cormier

I was never a cool person; in fact, cool people have always made fun of me. That's why I loved [the Robert Cormier YA novel] The Chocolate War - because the cool kids (not the establishment) were the villains. I totally identified with that. — Simon Rich

Ebola then turns the insides of its host into jelly: you begin to vomit black junk which is basically your dissolved liver and internal organs. — Andrew Cormier

No matter how much I respect someone or how much I like someone, it doesn't exceed my will to win. — Daniel Cormier

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

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

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

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

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

With the skills that I have and with my commitment to getting better I don't see any reason I can't win every single fight I'm in. — Daniel 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

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

Even the worst humans in the history of the world didn't grow up thinking, "I hope I slaughter an entire race of people when I'm an adult". — Andrew Cormier

If you truly believe in yourself and your skills, most times, it's enough. — Daniel Cormier

When you got a guy that has purpose, now your in a dog fight. — Daniel Cormier

I had watched him single handedly rip the head off a zombie as he had simultaneously prayed for its soul. When you witness a man do something like that, it changes your perception of them. — Andrew 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

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

With timid curiosity, I asked, what do you mean the old bodies get reused? — Andrew Cormier

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

They murdered him. — 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

If I'm to accomplish my goal of being the world champion I've got to be better; so every day I come in here with a goal, and that's to get better. — Daniel 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

As the days went by, my frustration festered like an outhouse during a Jamaican summer. — Andrew Cormier

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

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

Now that's a true bitch, but that's Hell for you. — Andrew Cormier

Every day I wake up and I realize how lucky I am to be living this life. — Daniel Cormier

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

Many of our flaws are old emotional defenses which may fade away when we're loved in spite of them. — Rick 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

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

Happiness is a way of traveling and not a destination — 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

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 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

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

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

There is an unspoken agreement in every successful relationship: "I'm not perfect and you're not perfect. I can ignore your imperfections if you can ignore mine. I choose to spend my life in your company. — Rick 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