Share
×
Inspirational Quotes
Authors
Professions
Topics
Tags
Quote
The beautiful part of writing is that you don't have to get it right the first time, unlike, say, a brain surgeon. You can always do it better, find the exact word, the apt phrase, the leaping simile.
Robert Cormier
Share
Change background
T
T
T
Change font
Original
TAGS & TOPICS
Robert Cormier
Age: 75 †
Born: 1925
Born: January 17
Died: 2000
Died: November 2
Author
Journalist
Writer
Bay State
Robert Edmund Cormier
Firsts
Unlike
First
Phrases
Right
Brain
Leaping
Writing
Word
Simile
Always
Beautiful
Surgeon
Time
Part
Surgeons
Better
Phrase
Find
Exact
More quotes by 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
I'm always telling myself as I write that I'm not really writing a novel I'm just going to fool around with a character or an idea.
Robert Cormier
They don't actually want you to do your own thing, not unless it's their thing too.
Robert Cormier
I am frightened by today's world, terrified by it. I think that comes out in the books. I'm afraid of big things. Some of these schools have three thousand kids, and even the size of the schools frightens me. Big government frightens me so does big defense.
Robert Cormier
Kids tell me all the time, I don't know how you do it, but that's us in the book. That's the kind of response you want, and I can't sacrifice it for the sake of somebody worried about censorship. You have to find a way to be truthful and honest.
Robert Cormier
As much as there is joy in writing, there's always the little bit of terror to keep you on edge, on your toes. It is a strange way to occupy yourself - to enjoy your life on a daily basis. There is no guarantee that something great is going to come next.
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
I find that most books that I don't like are those in which the authors have indulged themselves. I can almost sense when they're writing something for themselves.
Robert Cormier
I don't think I began to be a professional writer until I learned my weaknesses and what I couldn't do. This forced me to compensate.
Robert Cormier
I have always had a sense that we are all pretty much alone in life, particularly in adolescence.
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
Writing, even though it's hard work, is really a joy when you get these characters to come alive. It's hard to trace where they come from. I can't say that I am sitting here one night at nine o'clock and that a character occurs to me. The magic for me happens at the typewriter.
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
I read a lot of detective stories because they always deliver. They give you a beginning, a middle, and an end - a resolution. The modern novels I read don't always deliver because I'm looking essentially for a story. As in Shakespeare, The play's the thing. In particular I read detective stories for pacing, plot and suspense.
Robert Cormier
I sometimes get tired because I can seldom read a book for pleasure. I'm like the play reviewer who happens to go to a play on an off day and can't help but view it critically.
Robert Cormier
A writer must take risks, defy the odds, be a bit obsessed and a little mad.
Robert Cormier
I simply write with an intelligent reader in mind. I don't think about how old they are.
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
We often think that tragedies happen because of great earthquakes in people's lives. I think they sometimes occur because of small things that become obsessive to a particular person.
Robert Cormier
You hope that people read your book and say Yes, this is the way it is or could be. But then you have no way of knowing until the reader reads the book. Actually, the critical response doesn't worry me. I've had very few reviews that have upset me.
Robert Cormier
