[My maternal grandmother ] was a teacher in London and elsewhere during the war, although the children she taught were not the “lost children” who feature in the novel – those come from my research.
CHRIS CLEAVEI know that the hopes of this whole human world can fit inside one soul.
More Chris Cleave Quotes
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A scar is never ugly. That is what the scar makers want us to think. A scar does not form on the dying. A scar means, I survived.
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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 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
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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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My maternal grandmother was in London during the Blitz. Indeed, the man she was dating before she met my grandfather was killed beside her in a cinema, in 1941, when a bomb came through the roof – a tragedy in which she herself was badly wounded.
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Yet war doesn’t end with armistice, it only ends with forgiveness and reconciliation.
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I know that the hopes of this whole human world can fit inside one soul.
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I’m a much better writer for being a father.
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We leave it up to books and movies to talk about WWII on our behalf.
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At this point in time the war [ WWII] is close enough to still feel hotly personal to a writer, yet far enough away so that jingoism and heroics are no longer required.
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Things that we have to really dare ourselves to do come quite naturally to others.
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I’m really interested in people’s decisions.
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WWII was, without exaggeration, the biggest event in all of human history, and it is still within living memory.
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I think bravery means a different thing to everyone.
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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.
CHRIS CLEAVE