Quote

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

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Robert Cormier
Age: 75 †
Born: 1925
Born: January 17
Died: 2000
Died: November 2
Author
Journalist
Writer
Bay State
Robert Edmund Cormier
White
Frigid
Everything
Arctic
Would
Indifference
Smoke
Anger
Hell
Fire
Came

More quotes by Robert Cormier

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...pain reaches a certain point and does not get worse but remains in all its intensity and you can survive it.
Robert Cormier
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You bring up your children to be self-reliant and independent and they double-cross you and become self-reliant and independent.
Robert Cormier
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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
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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
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Everybody sins, Francis. The terrible thing is that we love our sins. We love the thing that makes us evil.
Robert Cormier
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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
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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
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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
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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
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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
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I have lived a thousand lives lost within the pages of a book.
Robert Cormier
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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
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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
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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
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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
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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
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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
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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
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A writer must take risks, defy the odds, be a bit obsessed and a little mad.
Robert Cormier
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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