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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.

Chris Cleave

Everyone carries the weight of WWII with them in their recent family history, and yet it is rarely spoken about within families, because veterans and survivors don’t tend to talk.
CHRIS CLEAVE

Survivor Veteran Weight
And thus love makes fools of us all.
CHRIS CLEAVE

Fool Love Make Thus
Sometimes we don’t notice that someone is being brave, because they are only doing something that seems quite easy for us.
CHRIS CLEAVE

Brave Easy Sometimes
I could not stop talking because now I had started my story, it wanted to be finished. We cannot choose where to start and stop. Our stories are the tellers of us.
CHRIS CLEAVE

Stories Talking Writing
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

Bad Day Giving Lazy
Still shaking, in the pew, I understood that it isn’t the dead we cry for. We cry for ourselves, and I didn’t deserve my own pity.
CHRIS CLEAVE

Cry Pity Understood
Horror in your country is something you take a dose of to remind yourself that you are not suffering from it.
CHRIS CLEAVE

Country Horror Suffering
I am a woman built upon the wreckage of myself.
CHRIS CLEAVE

Built Woman Wreckage
I think, in common with a lot of novelists, I wasn’t the most athletic guy at school.
CHRIS CLEAVE

Guy School Thinking
I’m a much better writer for being a father.
CHRIS CLEAVE

Being Better Father Much
My paternal grandmother drove ambulances during the regional Blitz, in Birmingham.
CHRIS CLEAVE

Ambulance Birmingham Grandmother
WWII was, without exaggeration, the biggest event in all of human history, and it is still within living memory.
CHRIS CLEAVE

Events Memories Wwii
Things that we have to really dare ourselves to do come quite naturally to others.
CHRIS CLEAVE

Dare Refuge Understand
If I could not smile, I think my situation would be even more serious.
CHRIS CLEAVE

Serious Smile Thinking
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.
CHRIS CLEAVE

Capes Names Running
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

Bombs Horse Littles

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.

Related Topics

Popular Authors

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.

Related Topics

Popular Authors

More Chris Cleave Quotes