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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.

Chris Cleave

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

Anger Hate Writing
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
Psychiatry in this place is like serving an in-flight meal in the middle of a plane crash. If I wanted to make you well, as a doctor, I should be giving you a parachute, not a cheese-and-pickle sandwich.
CHRIS CLEAVE

Doctors Giving Pickles
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.
CHRIS CLEAVE

Generations Golden Thinking
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.
CHRIS CLEAVE

Girl Looks Stories
If I could not smile, I think my situation would be even more serious.
CHRIS CLEAVE

Serious Smile Thinking
Sad words are just another beauty. A sad story means, this storyteller is alive
CHRIS CLEAVE

Alive Mean Stories
There’s what people say, and there’s what people mean, and I like to explore the difference between the two.
CHRIS CLEAVE

Differences Mean Two
Yet war doesn’t end with armistice, it only ends with forgiveness and reconciliation.
CHRIS CLEAVE

Armistice Ends War
I think bravery means a different thing to everyone.
CHRIS CLEAVE

Bravery Mean Thinking
And thus love makes fools of us all.
CHRIS CLEAVE

Fool Love Make Thus
My paternal grandmother drove ambulances during the regional Blitz, in Birmingham.
CHRIS CLEAVE

Ambulance Birmingham Grandmother
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
I write in the novel’s afterword that our recent wars “finish not with victory or defeat but with a calendar draw-down date and a presumption that we shall never be reconciled with the enemy”.
CHRIS CLEAVE

Enemy War Writing
WWII was, without exaggeration, the biggest event in all of human history, and it is still within living memory.
CHRIS CLEAVE

Events Memories Wwii
We leave it up to books and movies to talk about WWII on our behalf.
CHRIS CLEAVE

Behalf Books Movies

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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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.

Related Topics

Popular Authors

More Chris Cleave Quotes