Nobody has the time to sit down and explain the first world from first principles.
CHRIS CLEAVENobody has the time to sit down and explain the first world from first principles.
CHRIS CLEAVEWe 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 CLEAVEI’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 CLEAVEI think, in common with a lot of novelists, I wasn’t the most athletic guy at school.
CHRIS CLEAVEI’m not happy with just repeating myself.
CHRIS CLEAVEI 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 CLEAVEI 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 CLEAVEYet war doesn’t end with armistice, it only ends with forgiveness and reconciliation.
CHRIS CLEAVEThings that we have to really dare ourselves to do come quite naturally to others.
CHRIS CLEAVEIf I could not smile, I think my situation would be even more serious.
CHRIS CLEAVEThe 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 CLEAVEAnd thus love makes fools of us all.
CHRIS CLEAVEHorror in your country is something you take a dose of to remind yourself that you are not suffering from it.
CHRIS CLEAVEAndrew had a gift for deepening the incision he began.
CHRIS CLEAVEI am a woman built upon the wreckage of myself.
CHRIS CLEAVEI’m really interested in people’s decisions.
CHRIS CLEAVE