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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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Robert Cormier
Age: 75 †
Born: 1925
Born: January 17
Died: 2000
Died: November 2
Author
Journalist
Writer
Bay State
Robert Edmund Cormier
Must
Mad
Obsessed
Writer
Risk
Bits
Littles
Defy
Little
Risks
Take
Odds
More quotes by 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
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
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
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
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 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
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
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
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
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
I have always had a sense that we are all pretty much alone in life, particularly in adolescence.
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
They don't actually want you to do your own thing, not unless it's their thing too.
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. You can always do it better, find the exact word, the apt phrase, the leaping simile.
Robert Cormier
I can't remember a time when I wasn't trying to get something down on paper.
Robert Cormier
I have lived a thousand lives lost within the pages of a book.
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
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
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
