Chris Cleave Quotes

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Her mother set to with the hairbrush again. "But would that be so awful, darling? To be the prettiest thing in Brimscombe-and-Thrupp?"

"I should rather die."

"You nearly did."

"Yes, but I tend to blame the Germans.
Chris Cleave Quotes: Her mother set to with
But what good is it to teach a child to count, if you don't show him that he counts for something?
Chris Cleave Quotes: But what good is it
It was an air one might still breathe, if everyone forgiven was brave.
Chris Cleave Quotes: It was an air one
In the quiet of the garden then the robin shook his worm, and swallowed its life from the light into darkness with the quick indifference of a god.
Chris Cleave Quotes: In the quiet of the
Do you remember back when you felt you could actually do something to make the world better?" "You're talking to the wrong man. I work for central government, remember? Actually doing something is the mistake we're trained to avoid.
Chris Cleave Quotes: Do you remember back when
Without light, how can you keep the sight of the eyes? Without a future, how can you preserve the government? [ ... ] We could have a most dilligent Home Secretary of Lunchtime. We could have an excellent Prime Minister of the Quietest Part of the Late Afternoon. But when twilight comes -do you see?- our world disappears. It cannot see beyond the day because you have taken tomorrow. And because you have tomorrow in front of your eyes, you cannot see what is being done today.
Chris Cleave Quotes: Without light, how can you
Before you bombed my boy Osama I always thought an explosion was such a quick thing but now I know better. The flash is over very fast but the fire catches hold inside you and the noise never stops ... I live in an inferno where you could shiver with cold Osama. This life is a deafening roar but listen. You could hear a pin drop.
Chris Cleave Quotes: Before you bombed my boy
So when I say that I am a refugee, you must understand that there is no refuge.
Chris Cleave Quotes: So when I say that
hand of a soldier on my arm but I did not turn
Chris Cleave Quotes: hand of a soldier on
I realized that I was carrying two cargoes. Yes, one of them was horror, but the other one was hope. I realized I had killed myself back to life.
Chris Cleave Quotes: I realized that I was
Oh, I hope I don't teach. Because look what we did: we saved the zoo animals and the nice children, and we damned the afflicted and the blacks. You know what I do every day in that classroom? I do everything in my power to make sure those poor souls won't learn the obvious lesson.
Chris Cleave Quotes: Oh, I hope I don't
Lord," he said, "on this holiest of days, we thank you for food and ammunition. May our ships get through and the enemy's get lost." They all said "Amen" and then the orderlies brought in something that the cook had made out of bread crumbs and canned malevolence. Alistair
Chris Cleave Quotes: Lord,
The good days are when you perform; the slow days are when you learn to perform better. The only bad days as a writer are the ones when you are too cowardly or too lazy to sit down at the keyboard and give it everything you have.
Chris Cleave Quotes: The good days are when
You are a mousetrap of a friend, all soft cheese and hard springs
Chris Cleave Quotes: You are a mousetrap of
The sweetness of the blackberries revealed itself incompletely, changing and deepening until it dissolved from the back of the tongue with the maddening hint of a greater remainder. He was left with a question he could not phrase, and a galaxy of tiny seeds that tantalized the tongue.
Chris Cleave Quotes: The sweetness of the blackberries
I'm a much better writer for being a father.
Chris Cleave Quotes: I'm a much better writer
Horror in your country is something you take a dose of to remind yourself that you are not suffering from it.
Chris Cleave Quotes: Horror in your country is
The worst thing would be to decide that it was love, and then to discover - after one was taken - that it hadn't been. No: the worst thing would be to decide that it wasn't love, and then to discover years later - old and unconsoled - that it had been. No: the worst thing - the worst, worst thing - was this having to decide.
Chris Cleave Quotes: The worst thing would be
There are no goats. That is why you have all these beautiful flowers." "There were goats, in your village?" "Yes, and they ate all the flowers." "I'm sorry." "Do not be sorry. We ate all the goats.
Chris Cleave Quotes: There are no goats. That
I was hoping my life might make more sense from a great height.
Chris Cleave Quotes: I was hoping my life
Every bitter joule of rage had been converted into speed. She was empty. There was no pain. The air whistled past her ears. She listened intently. That silent music was all there was. It was the sound of the universe showing her mercy.
Chris Cleave Quotes: Every bitter joule of rage
I smiled down at Charlie, and I understood that he would be free now even if I would not. In this way the life that was in me would find its way in him now. It was not a sad feeling. I felt my heart take off lightly like a butterfly and I thought, yes, this is it, something has survived in me, something that does not need to run anymore, because it is worth more than all the money in the world and its currency, its true home, is the living. And not just the living in this particular country or in that particular country, but the secret, irresistible heart of the living. I smiled back at Charlie and I knew that the hopes of this whole human world could fit inside one soul.
Chris Cleave Quotes: I smiled down at Charlie,
The future looks like gasoline ... crude oil ... is the future before it has been refined. It is like a dream of the future, really, and like any dream it ends with a rude awakening.
Chris Cleave Quotes: The future looks like gasoline
One does not rise above the everyday simply because one ought to.
Chris Cleave Quotes: One does not rise above
You travel here and you travel there, trying to get out from under the cloud, and nothing works, and then one day you realize you've been carrying the weather around with you.
Chris Cleave Quotes: You travel here and you
If one kept the great yellow mounds of smashed brick in the corner of one's eye, then the mind understood them as the contours of nature and forgot its trick of making one unhappy.
Chris Cleave Quotes: If one kept the great
Tea is the tast of my land:it is bitter and warm,strong,and sharp with memory.It tastes of longing.It tastes of the distance between where you are and where you come from.Also it vanishes-the taste of it vanishes from your tongue while your lips are still hot from the cup.It disappears,like plantations stretching up into the mist.I have heard that your country drinks more tea than any other.How sad that must make you-like children who long for absent mothers.I am sorry.
Chris Cleave Quotes: Tea is the tast of
London was perfectly prepared to give him a night out of anywhere on earth, and yet all he asked was to come home.
Chris Cleave Quotes: London was perfectly prepared to
But the film in your memory, your cannot walk out so easily.Wherever you go it is always playing
Chris Cleave Quotes: But the film in your
When death comes you do not stay for one minute in the place it has visited. Many things arrive after death-sadness, questions, and policemen- and none of these can be answered when your papers are not in order.
Chris Cleave Quotes: When death comes you do
There are countries of the world, and regions of one's own mind, where it is unwise to travel.
Chris Cleave Quotes: There are countries of the
There was extraordinary pain behind the ordinary nouns.
Chris Cleave Quotes: There was extraordinary pain behind
Looking after a very sick child was the Olympics of parenting.
Chris Cleave Quotes: Looking after a very sick
I do not know why the mind chooses these small things to break itself on.
Chris Cleave Quotes: I do not know why
I'm going to write to you about the emptiness that was left when you took my boy away. I'm going to write so you can look into my empty life and see what a human boy really is from the shape of the hole he leaves behind. I want you to feel that hole in your heart and stroke it with your hands and cut your fingers on its sharp edges.
Chris Cleave Quotes: I'm going to write to
One didn't understand, until one had seen a great many bodies, the unconscious effort that one must be making every minute simply to keep one's hands and face and clothes clean. The world's surfaces were so filthy that the living touched them only with the tips of their fingers and the soles of their shoes. How grubby it was to die, to give up making that effort.
Chris Cleave Quotes: One didn't understand, until one
He thought of Tom dancing with the girl, and he was happy. Sleep came, finally, with the music swelling into the vacuum in his mind where there had been only that high, thin whining. The gramophone spun and he slept, with the letter still in his hand. He had kissed Duggan as he was dying. It had seemed the only thing to do.
Chris Cleave Quotes: He thought of Tom dancing
I regret that [my grandfather] never saw the book. i had finished the third draft of what turned out to be five, but I had decided to wait until the novel was perfect before I gave it to him to read. What a fool I am. If you will forgive the one piece of advice a writer is qualified to give: never be afraid of showing someone you love a working draft of yourself.
Chris Cleave Quotes: I regret that [my grandfather]
And thus love makes fools of us all.
Chris Cleave Quotes: And thus love makes fools
I know that the hopes of this whole human world can fit inside one soul.
Chris Cleave Quotes: I know that the hopes
What is an adventure? That depends on where you are starting from. Little girls in your country, they hide in the gap between the washing machine and the refrigerator and they make believe they are in the jungle, with green snakes and monkeys all around them. Me and my sister, we used to hide in a gap in the jungle, with green snakes and monkeys all around us, and make believe that we had a washing machine and a refrigerator. You live in a world of machines and you dream off things with beating hearts. We dream of machines, because we see where beating hearts have left us.
Chris Cleave Quotes: What is an adventure? That
My whole life is my work.
Chris Cleave Quotes: My whole life is my
turned out that the only difference between children and adults was that children were prepared to put twice the energy into the project of not being sad.
Chris Cleave Quotes: turned out that the only
It is good to live like this. Once you are ready to die, you do not suffer so badly from the horror.
Chris Cleave Quotes: It is good to live
Perhaps this was what love was like after all- not the lurch of going over a humpback bridge, and not the incandescence of fireworks, just the quiet understanding that one should take a kind hand when it was offered, before all light was gone from the sky.
Chris Cleave Quotes: Perhaps this was what love
Our stories are the tellers of us. -Little Bee
Chris Cleave Quotes: Our stories are the tellers
How could he even attempt it, after eight days and nights of bombing? And yet this is when he must write: now, in the lull between attacks...War made one do everything when one wasn't at all ready. Dying, yes, but also living.
Chris Cleave Quotes: How could he even attempt
Your whole life, you had to fit it onto one sheet of paper. There was a black line around the edge of the sheet, a border, and if you wrote outside the line then your application would not be valid. They only gave you enough space to write down the very saddest things that had happened to you. That was the worst part. Because if you cannot read the beautiful things that have happened in someone's life, why should you care about their sadness?
Chris Cleave Quotes: Your whole life, you had
It's extremely hard for athletes to accept what's happened to them sometimes. It's hard to be beaten by a small margin, and I've spoken with athletes who, for years afterward, have been tormented by the knowledge that, had they done something ever so slightly different, they could have been one-ten-thousandth of a second quicker.
Chris Cleave Quotes: It's extremely hard for athletes
The church was stuffed with mourners, of course. No one from work - I tried to keep my life and my magazine separate - but otherwise everybody Andrew and I knew was there. It was disorientating, like having the entire contents of one's address book dressed in black and exported into pews in non alphabetical order.
Chris Cleave Quotes: The church was stuffed with
I'm telling you, trouble is like the ocean. It covers two thirds of the world.
Chris Cleave Quotes: I'm telling you, trouble is
That is how we lived, happily and without hope. I was very young then, and I did not miss having a future because I did not know I was entitled to one.
Chris Cleave Quotes: That is how we lived,
I'm always determined that as a novelist I'm going to go out there and research my characters very thoroughly before I start writing.
Chris Cleave Quotes: I'm always determined that as
I think that the relationship between two top-level athletes who are rivals is one of the most fascinating human relationships to explore. It's always one atom away from being a tragedy.
Chris Cleave Quotes: I think that the relationship
A pound coin can go wherever it thinks it will be safest ... It can disguise itself as power or property and there is nothing more serious than you are a girl who has neither. 12
Chris Cleave Quotes: A pound coin can go
I was carrying two cargoes. Yes, one of them was horror, but the other one was hope.
Chris Cleave Quotes: I was carrying two cargoes.
To her, Do yu know the name of dis place where we is at? But the third girl did not know either. She just stood there, and she was wearing a blue T-shirt and blue denim jeans and white Dunlop Green Flash trainers, and she just looked down at her own see-through bag, and her bag was full of letters and documents. There was so
Chris Cleave Quotes: To her, Do yu know
This thing with being lovers, it isn't like being married.
Chris Cleave Quotes: This thing with being lovers,
A girl like me gets stopped at immigration.
Chris Cleave Quotes: A girl like me gets
Life took longer to reassemble than it did to blow apart, but that didn't mean it wouldn't be lovely, providing that one remembered to go for country walks, and to tune the wireless to music.
Chris Cleave Quotes: Life took longer to reassemble
Perhaps at twenty, one is naturally curious about life, but at thirty, simply suspicious of anyone who still has one.
Chris Cleave Quotes: Perhaps at twenty, one is
Women fall differently, that's all. We die by the stopping of our hearts, they by the insistence of theirs.
Chris Cleave Quotes: Women fall differently, that's all.
Psychiatry in this place is like serving an in-flight meal in the middle of a plane crash. If I wanted to make you well, as a doctor, I should be giving you a parachute, not a cheese-and-pickle sandwich.
Chris Cleave Quotes: Psychiatry in this place is
Because this is how it was with them: the boy's father had dark skin, darker even than my own, and the boy's mother was a white woman. They were holding hands and smiling at their boy, whose skin was light brown. It was the color of the man and the woman joined in happiness. It
Chris Cleave Quotes: Because this is how it
Life is savagely unfair. It ignores our deep-seated convictions and places a disproportionate emphasis on the decisions we make in split seconds.
Chris Cleave Quotes: Life is savagely unfair. It
They say that in the hour before an earthquake the clouds hang leaden in the sky, the winds slows to a hot breath, and the birds fall quiet in the trees of the town square. Yes but these are the same portents that precede lunchtime, frankly.
Chris Cleave Quotes: They say that in the
We are a nation of glorious cowards, ready to battle any evil but our own." Her
Chris Cleave Quotes: We are a nation of
Sad words are just another beauty. A sad story means, this storyteller is alive. The next thing you know something fine will happen to her, something marvelous, and then she will turn around and smile.
Chris Cleave Quotes: Sad words are just another
I suppose all of us have to look at our job and ask how it now serves the cause I suppose one is lucky if a simple answer presents itself.
Chris Cleave Quotes: I suppose all of us
Do those scars cover the whole of you, like the stars and the moons on your dess? I though that would be pretty too, and I ask you right here please to agree with me that a scar is never ugly. That is what the scar makers want us to think. But you and I, we must make an agreement to defy them. We must see all scars as beauty. OKay? This will be our secret. Because take it from me, a scar does not form on dying. A scar means, I survivied.
Chris Cleave Quotes: Do those scars cover the
Oh, you know. The lingering sensation that in pursuit of my own exacting goals and objectives I might not have been as generous in spirit as I could have been with regard to the needs and dreams of the people I cared most about or for whom I was emotionally responsible.
Chris Cleave Quotes: Oh, you know. The lingering
Exposing corruption, brandishing truth.
Chris Cleave Quotes: Exposing corruption, brandishing truth.
Just beyond your sight, life might be moving in ways that were moments away from being revealed to you.
Chris Cleave Quotes: Just beyond your sight, life
Life is extremely short and you cannot dance to current affairs.
Chris Cleave Quotes: Life is extremely short and
To be in love was to understand how alone one had been before. It was to know that if one were ever alone again, there would be no exemption from the agony of it. It wasn't the happiest feeling.
Chris Cleave Quotes: To be in love was
April showers bring May flowers
Chris Cleave Quotes: April showers bring May flowers
That is the trouble with happiness-all of it is built on top of something that men want.
Chris Cleave Quotes: That is the trouble with
İf you cannot read the beautiful things that have happened in someone's life, why should you care about their sadness? That is why people do not like us refugees. It is because they only know the tragic parts of our life, so they think we are tragic people.
Chris Cleave Quotes: İf you cannot read the
He really had experienced every tiniest increment of time in the four decades since then, and yet here he was surprised to be suddenly old and crippled. Turned out the rope didn't care if you noticed every daisy on the path to the gallows.
Chris Cleave Quotes: He really had experienced every
There was less of him now. There was less of them all. Officers and men dragged themselves around in uniforms three sizes too big, new holes punched into every belt, every collar hanging loose. They were a garrison of skinny boys performing a play about soldiers.
Chris Cleave Quotes: There was less of him
Perhaps it was true, thought Alistair, that Septembers would come again. People would love the crisp cool of the mornings, and it would not remind them of the week war was declared....Alistair let the idea grow: that when the war's heat was spent, the last remaining pilots would ditch their last bombs into the sea and land their planes on cratered airfields that would slowly give way to brambles. That pilots would take off their jackets and ties, and pick fruit.
Chris Cleave Quotes: Perhaps it was true, thought
April showers bring May flower
Chris Cleave Quotes: April showers bring May flower
There in the sweet sacking smell of the mail bags he understood that he was dying, and it pleased him that he was going in the company of so many soft words home.
Chris Cleave Quotes: There in the sweet sacking
I move we get more wine,' Alistair said. 'What does the panel think?' ...
It was obvious that the entire war could be solved in this way. The trick would be to reach for a corkscrew instead, every time some brass hat ordered artillery.
Chris Cleave Quotes: I move we get more
I planned how I would kill myself in the time of Churchill (stand under bombs), Victoria (throw myself under a horse), and Henry the Eighth (marry Henry the Eighth)- Little Bee
Chris Cleave Quotes: I planned how I would
There was no quick grief for Andrew because he had been so slowly lost. First from my heart, then from my mind, and only finally from my life.
Chris Cleave Quotes: There was no quick grief
I was brought up to believe that everyone brave is forgiven, but in wartime courage is cheap and clemency out of season. Unless
Chris Cleave Quotes: I was brought up to
It was not warm and not cold. There was no wind and the sky was very low and grey but it wasn't raining. It was like they'd completely run out of weather.
Chris Cleave Quotes: It was not warm and
On our honeymoon we talked and talked. We stayed in a beachfront villa, and we drank rum and lemonade and talked so much that I never even noticed what color the sea was. Whenever I need to stop and remind myself how much I once loved Andrew, I only need to think about this. That the ocean covers seven tenths of the earth's surface, and yet my husband could make me not notice it.
Chris Cleave Quotes: On our honeymoon we talked
To be well in your mind you have first to be free.
Chris Cleave Quotes: To be well in your
I'm not happy with just repeating myself.
Chris Cleave Quotes: I'm not happy with just
How to explain ... that the warning signs were so slight? That disaster, when it is quite sure of its own strength, will announce itself by hardly moving its lips?
Chris Cleave Quotes: How to explain ... that
I suppose we ought to be getting home, in any case."

"Oh god, is it wartime already?"

"Look on the bright side: it'll be dinner when we get back.
Chris Cleave Quotes: I suppose we ought to
who, what, where, when, and why?
Chris Cleave Quotes: who, what, where, when, and
Peace is a time when people can tell each other their real names
Chris Cleave Quotes: Peace is a time when
Alistair smiled. 'How long this war has been.'
'I'll say. One hardly remembers how we lived before. Lightly - not worrying much.'
'Do you suppose we shall ever live that way again?'
'Oh, who knows? Given sufficient champagne and ether.'
'Maybe if we stay drunk to the end of our days we shan't remember.
Chris Cleave Quotes: Alistair smiled. 'How long this
Stupid is you can't learn, ignorant is you haven't learned yet.
Chris Cleave Quotes: Stupid is you can't learn,
I'm really interested in people's decisions.
Chris Cleave Quotes: I'm really interested in people's
If this policeman began to suspect me, he could call the immigration people. Then one of them would click a button on their computer and mark a check box on my file and I would be deported. I would be dead, but no one would have fired any bullets. I realized, this is why the police do not carry guns. In a civilized country, they kill you with a click. The killing is done far away, at the heart of the kingdom in a building full of computers and coffee cups.
Chris Cleave Quotes: If this policeman began to
LIFE is a big word, isn't it? Let's break it down into small segments. Let's find a level of granularity we can plan around; we could say we'll take it a month at a time, or a week at a time, and treat each of those modules almost as training units.
Chris Cleave Quotes: LIFE is a big word,
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