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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

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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
Someone
Taboo
Book
Topics
Important
Shocking
Every
However
Years
Open
Taboos
Way
Year
Handled
Reading
Topic
Whether
Applies

More quotes by Robert Cormier

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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
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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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I can't remember a time when I wasn't trying to get something down on paper.
Robert Cormier
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I have always had a sense that we are all pretty much alone in life, particularly in adolescence.
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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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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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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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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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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They don't actually want you to do your own thing, not unless it's their thing too.
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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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
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When I write, I never think of segments as chapters I think of them as scenes. I always visualize them in my mind. Then I try to get the scene down on paper as closely as I can. That's the one thing that readers don't see - what you have in your mind. The reader can only see what you get on the page.
Robert Cormier
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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
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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
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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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It doesn't matter how big the body, it's what you do with it.
Robert Cormier
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I had my bully, and it was excruciating. Not only the bully, but the intimidation I felt.
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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You bring up your children to be self-reliant and independent and they double-cross you and become self-reliant and independent.
Robert Cormier