Robert Cormier

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.

I can't remember a time when I wasn't trying to get something down on paper.

My first career ambitions involved turning into a boy; I intended to be either a railway guard or a knight errant.

Acting is a masochistic form of exhibitionism. It is not quite the occupation of an adult.

After all, we are not French and never can be, and any attempt to be so is to deny our inheritance and to try to impose upon ourselves a character that can be nothing but a veneer upon the surface.