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 CLEAVESometimes we don’t notice that someone is being brave, because they are only doing something that seems quite easy for us.
More Chris Cleave Quotes
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The reason why I love people, and writing about them, is because they don’t always respond with hate and anger. If they did I wouldn’t have a story to tell. Who wants to know about someone who was brutalised and became brutal? I’m interested in the exceptions.
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Even for a girl like me, then, there comes a day when she can stop surviving and start living. To survive, you have to look good or talk good. But to end your story well– here is the truth– you have to talk yourself out of it.
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We leave it up to books and movies to talk about WWII on our behalf.
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There’s what people say, and there’s what people mean, and I like to explore the difference between the two.
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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.
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Death, of course, is a refuge. It’s where you go when a new name, or a mask and cape, can no longer hide you from yourself. It’s where you run to when none of the principalities of your conscience will grant you asylum.
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We no longer need to show people being brave: instead, we can examine how they became brave. We can assume that they didn’t start out that way. If we allow that they started out just like us, then their journey into courage becomes both more fascinating and more impressive.
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A scar does not form on the dying. A scar means, I survived.
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Horror in your country is something you take a dose of to remind yourself that you are not suffering from it.
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And thus love makes fools of us all.
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I think bravery means a different thing to everyone.
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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.
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I think all of us are intrigued to imagine what we as individuals would become, if we were ever tested as hard as that golden generation was.
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I think, in common with a lot of novelists, I wasn’t the most athletic guy at school.
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My paternal grandmother drove ambulances during the regional Blitz, in Birmingham.
CHRIS CLEAVE