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 CLEAVEEven 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.
More Chris Cleave Quotes
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Things that we have to really dare ourselves to do come quite naturally to others.
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[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.
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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.
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If I could not smile, I think my situation would be even more serious.
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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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Sometimes we don’t notice that someone is being brave, because they are only doing something that seems quite easy for us.
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A scar does not form on the dying. A scar means, I survived.
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And thus love makes fools of us all.
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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.
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I’m not happy with just repeating myself.
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I’m a much better writer for being a father.
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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 know that the hopes of this whole human world can fit inside one soul.
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I think bravery means a different thing to everyone.
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My paternal grandmother drove ambulances during the regional Blitz, in Birmingham.
CHRIS CLEAVE






