Robert Cormier
Robert Cormier
Robert Edmund Cormierwas an American author, columnist and reporter, known for his deeply pessimistic, downbeat literature. His most popular works include I Am the Cheese, After the First Death, We All Fall Down and The Chocolate War, all of which have won awards. The Chocolate War was challenged in multiple libraries. His books often are concerned with themes such as abuse, mental illness, violence, revenge, betrayal and conspiracy. In most of his novels, the protagonists do not win...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionAuthor
Date of Birth17 July 1925
CountryUnited States of America
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.
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.
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?
They don't actually want you to do your own thing, not unless it's their thing too.
I have always had a sense that we are all pretty much alone in life, particularly in adolescence.
People throw the word love around like confetti when they actually mean affection.
You seldom get a censorship attempt from a 14-year-old boy. It's the adults who get upset.
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.
You bring up your children to be self-reliant and independent and they double-cross you and become self-reliant and independent.
And he did see--that life was rotten, that there were no heroes, really, and that you couldn't trust anybody, not even yourself.
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.
Everybody sins, Francis. The terrible thing is that we love our sins. We love the thing that makes us evil.
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.
It's amazing that the heart makes no noise when it cracks.