Life & Wisdom Quote by Robert Cormier

Cormier’s line lands like a confession stripped of literary varnish: the real wound isn’t just the bully, it’s what the bully installs inside you. By separating “the bully” from “the intimidation I felt,” he points to bullying as a two-part assault - external cruelty and internal occupation. The second part lingers. Intimidation becomes a climate you breathe, a private law you start obeying even when no one is watching.

The phrasing is plain, almost stubbornly unpoetic, which is exactly why it works. “I had my bully” carries a grim, possessive inevitability, as if everyone is issued one, like a bad locker assignment. That casual ownership sharpens the critique: this isn’t an aberration, it’s a social arrangement. “Excruciating” then spikes the sentence with bodily pain, refusing the cultural downgrade of bullying into “kids being kids.”

Cormier’s broader work - especially The Chocolate War - treats adolescent life as a political system in miniature, where power operates through humiliation, rumor, and enforced silence. This quote fits that worldview: intimidation is not merely fear, but a method of governance. It trains compliance, isolates targets, recruits bystanders into complicity. The subtext is adult, even if the scene is youthful: institutions often protect the smooth functioning of the group over the person being harmed.

He’s also quietly arguing for moral seriousness about psychological damage. The bully is a person; intimidation is the lasting architecture the person leaves behind. That’s the excruciating part Cormier won’t let you look away from.