Quotes from Robert Cormier

She didn't want to look ahead to the days and the months and the years with him. Here, now, in this room, it was all right, but later? Again, time couldn't stop. And she saw at last that time only stopped when you were dead...Time was always moving and nothing could stay the same, everything was always changing, for better or for worse. And you had to change with time, with the seasons and the years, or you would be dead too, although your heart would continue to beat.

It's amazing that the heart makes no noise when it cracks.

My wife likes to say there are two kinds of people, those chasing pleasure and those running from pain. Maybe she's right, I don't know. What I do know is this: Pleasure helps you forget. But pain, pain forces you to hope. You tell yourself this can't last. Today could be different. Today something just might change.

Was this all there was to life, after all? You finished school, found an occupation, got married, became a father, watched your wife die, and then lived through days and nights that seemed to have no sunrises, no dawns and no dusks, nothing but a gray drabness.

Archie believed in always doing the smart thing. Not the thing you ached to do, not the impulsive act, but the thing that would pay off later.

The beautiful part about writing is you don't have to get it right the first time, unlike, say, a brain surgeon.

They tell you to do your thing but they don't mean it. They don't want you to do your own thing, not unless it happens to be their thing, too. It's a laugh, Goober, a fake. Don't disturb the universe, Goober, no matter what the posters say.

I enjoyed living here. Nobody gets drunk and nobody gets battered.

The room seemed to have lost a certain essence that he could not pin down. Then knew suddenly what it was. The room was—lonely. For the first time in his life, he knew what loneliness was like. Until that moment the word had been meaningless to him.

She was sleek and stylish, every hair in place, slim and elegant. When preparing meals in the kitchen or baking a cake, she never appeared disheveled, never a dab of flour on her face. Even her aprons were stylish, not merely to protect her from spills or splashes. They matched whatever she was wearing.

Nothing glamorous like the write-ups in the papers or the newsreels. We weren't heroes. We were only there... Closing his eyes, he then slumps against the wall, as if the words he has spoken has used up all his energy.

He was afraid that his body would come loose, all his bones spilling out like a building collapsing, like a picket fence clattering apart.

They tell you to do your 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. It's a laugh, a fake. Don't disturb the universe, no matter what the posters say.

We just might make a quarterback out of you yet, you skinny little son of a bitch.

Life does not provide answers, only questions.

it was his choice. To be a witness, to observe, to let the events be recorded within himself on some personal film in some secret compartment no one knew about, except him.

he had never felt left out: it was his choice. To be a witness, to observe, to let the events be recorded within himself on some personal film in some secret compartment no one knew about, except him.

Para los demás, él no era más que un nombre y un apellido. Pero Nina Citrone lo había reconocido como persona, había visto en él una amabilidad cuya existencia él mismo desconocía.

They tell you to do your 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.

Nightmares ended when you woke up. Guilt never ended, worse in the dark of the night but with you all the time, day or night.

I have always had a sense that we are all pretty much alone in life, particularly in adolescence.

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.

The beautiful part of writing is that you don't have to get it right the first time, unlike, say, a brain surgeon.

It's amazing that the heart makes no noise when it cracks.