Robert Cormier > Quotes

“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

“It's amazing that the heart makes no noise when it cracks.”
― Robert Cormier, Heroes

“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, The Chocolate War

“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, The Chocolate War

“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, I Am the Cheese

“They don't actually want you to do your own thing, not unless it's their thing too.”
― Robert Cormier, The Chocolate War

“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, After the First Death

“Cities fell. Earth opened. Planets tilted. Stars plummeted. And the awful silence.”
― Robert Cormier, The Chocolate War

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

“Don't miss the bus, boy. You're missing a lot of things in the world, better not miss that bus.”
― Robert Cormier, The Chocolate War

“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, The Chocolate War

“People throw the word love around like confetti when they actually mean affection.”
― Robert Cormier, Tenderness

“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, The Chocolate War

“They tell you to do your own thing but they don't mean it. They don't want you to do your thing, not unless it happens to be their thing, too.”
― Robert Cormier, The Chocolate War

“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, The Chocolate War

“She discovered how distant pity was from hate, how very far it was from love.”
― Robert Cormier, We All Fall Down

“It doesn't matter how big the body, it's what you do with it.”
― Robert Cormier, The Chocolate War

“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, The Chocolate War

“They murdered him.”
― Robert Cormier, The Chocolate War

“There was nothing more beautiful in the world than the sight of a teacher getting upset.”
― Robert Cormier, The Chocolate War

“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, Beyond the Chocolate War

“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, Fade

“Why did the wise guys always accuse other people of being wise guys?”
― Robert Cormier, The Chocolate War

“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, Tenderness

“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, The Chocolate War

“You bring up your children to be self-reliant and independent and they double-cross you and become self-reliant and independent.”
― Robert Cormier, 8 Plus 1

“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, The Chocolate War

“Mr. Sinclair once asked the class to make a list of the ten most beautiful words in the English language, and the only word that really seemed beautiful to me was tenderness.”
― Robert Cormier, Tenderness

“...pain reaches a certain point and does not get worse but remains in all its intensity and you can survive it.”
― Robert Cormier, Tenderness

“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, The Chocolate War