Latest Robert Cormier Quotes from Interviews

Quotes about:

• As much as there is joy in writing, there's always the little bit of terror to keep you on edge, on your toes. It is a strange way to occupy yourself - to enjoy your life on a daily basis. There is no guarantee that something great is going to come next.

  Robert Cormier

  Writing, Guarantees That, Occupy Yourself

  Source: www.teachingbooks.net

• I don't like to think in terms of writing ten or twelve pages a day. Usually I'm writing a scene, and it's always with the idea, "I wonder what is going to happen." Or sometimes I write about something that affected me emotionally the day before and that I don't want to lose. I'm very unorganized at first; but finally it comes into a structure where consciously I'm working on a novel per se.

  Robert Cormier

  Writing, Thinking, Ideas

  Source: www.teachingbooks.net

• I'm always telling myself as I write that I'm not really writing a novel; I'm just going to fool around with a character or an idea.

  Robert Cormier

  Writing, Character, Ideas

  Source: www.teachingbooks.net

• People always ask me about the role models that I'm providing for kids, and I say I can't be concerned with that. I'm not worrying about corrupting youth. I'm worrying about writing realistically and truthfully to affect the reader.

  Robert Cormier

  Kids, Writing, Role Models

  Source: www.teachingbooks.net

• It would be the death of all creativity for me if I had to sit there and be concerned with the sensibilities of a fourteen-year-old kid. Some fourteen-year-olds would revel in the book, and some would be very sensitive to it, so you can't afford to worry about that. What I worry about is good taste and getting my message across by whatever means I can.

  Robert Cormier

  Book, Creativity, Mean

  Source: www.teachingbooks.net

• You have to accept the critical reviews if they treat you with respect. Actually, it's one person's opinion. So, it's a concern but not an overriding one, and I don't stay up nights worrying about reviews. But there are certain people I respect who I hope will like a book.

  Robert Cormier

  Book, Night, Worry

  Source: www.teachingbooks.net

• 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

  Book, Kids, Sacrifice

  Source: www.teachingbooks.net

• 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

  Book, Knowing, Worry

  Source: www.teachingbooks.net

• I'm not a reader of young adult fiction for the simple reason that these novelists are writing for adolescents, so they are not writing for me.

  Robert Cormier

  Writing, Simple, Fiction

  Source: www.teachingbooks.net

• Salinger is such a terrific writer; he did so many great things. He is one of those writers that I still reread, simply because he makes me see the possibilities and makes me feel like writing. There are certain writers who put you in the mood to write. In the way a whiff of a cigar will bring back memories of a ballgame on a Saturday afternoon, reading Salinger makes me want to get to the typewriter.

  Robert Cormier

  Memories, Reading, Writing

  Source: www.teachingbooks.net

• 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

  Book, Writing, I Can

  Source: www.teachingbooks.net

• There is very little that is accidental in my work. I believe in serendipity for developments of plot, but the actual writing is arrived at by very hard work. The joy of writing doesn't mean that you don't get the backaches and headaches and the days when it's not coming.

  Robert Cormier

  Believe, Writing, Mean

  Source: www.teachingbooks.net

• I write very tightly, and my big fear is boring people. I want them to read quickly, stopped in their tracks. I resist indulging myself.

  Robert Cormier

  Writing, Track, People

  Source: www.teachingbooks.net

• I use a lot of similes and metaphors when I work, simply because it's my best way of describing a building or a scene. I'm terrible at describing landscapes - trees, buildings. The inanimate things don't interest me: I always think, "Oh, no, here comes another building I have to describe." So I usually use a simile or metaphor.

  Robert Cormier

  Thinking, Tree, Use

  Source: www.teachingbooks.net

• 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

  Thinking, Weakness

  Source: www.teachingbooks.net

• The earliest influence on me was the movies of the thirties when I was growing up. Those were stories. If you look at them now, you see the development of character and the twists of plot; but essentially they told stories. My mother didn't go to the movies because of a religious promise she made early in her life, and I used to go to movies and come home and tell her the plots of those old Warner Brothers/James Cagney movies, the old romantic love stories. Through these movies that had real characters, I absorbed drama, sense of pacing, and plot.

  Robert Cormier

  Mother, Religious, Brother

  Source: www.teachingbooks.net

• 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

  Writing, Thinking, Mind

  Source: www.teachingbooks.net

• A man I know who writes and aspires to be a novelist does very little reading, and he's not that successful. But I think it's because he's like the kid who wants to be a ballplayer and never goes to the ballpark or tries to hit a ball. So I'd say reading is the most important thing that I do, besides the actual writing. I'm always asking as I read, "How did the writer do this? Why do I suddenly have tears in my eyes? Why am I crying?"

  Robert Cormier

  Reading, Writing, Kids

  Source: www.teachingbooks.net

• I read a lot of detective stories because they always deliver. They give you a beginning, a middle, and an end - a resolution. The modern novels I read don't always deliver because I'm looking essentially for a story. As in Shakespeare, "The play's the thing." In particular I read detective stories for pacing, plot and suspense.

  Robert Cormier

  Modern Novel, Play, Giving

  Source: www.teachingbooks.net

• I sometimes get tired because I can seldom read a book for pleasure. I'm like the play reviewer who happens to go to a play on an off day and can't help but view it critically.

  Robert Cormier

  Book, Tired, Views

  Source: www.teachingbooks.net

• When you get the ideas, that's a thrill; when you're writing the book and it's corning out well, that's a thrill; when you finish it and other people read it, that's a thrill. There are going to be reviews, of course; not everyone's going to love it. You feel sort of naked and vulnerable in a way. That's just a minor part of the process, really. If you can't take that part, you shouldn't be in the business. But there are so many joys to writing.

  Robert Cormier

  Book, Writing, Ideas

  Source: www.teachingbooks.net

• I am frightened by today's world, terrified by it. I think that comes out in the books. I'm afraid of big things. Some of these schools have three thousand kids, and even the size of the schools frightens me. Big government frightens me; so does big defense.

  Robert Cormier

  Book, School, Kids

  Source: www.teachingbooks.net

• The rewriting is always crucial to what I do; whenever I do a scene, I always tell myself that this isn't final and that I can do it again, better. The pacing is probably from experience. I've always liked gradual disclosure. I keep thinking of my rubber-band theory. You have a rubber band that you keep pulling and pulling and pulling, and just at the moment of snapping you release it and start another chapter and start pulling again.

  Robert Cormier

  Thinking, Finals, Band

  Source: www.teachingbooks.net

• A novel must work as a story because no one's going to get to the other themes if you don't entertain the reader. But I like to have another layer of meaning, although you can read the book on one level and not bother with that other layer.

  Robert Cormier

  Book, Stories, Levels

  Source: www.teachingbooks.net

• 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

  Hard Work, Writing, Character

  Source: www.teachingbooks.net