black
grey
blue
red
brown
white

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

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

Guy School 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
If I could not smile, I think my situation would be even more serious.
CHRIS CLEAVE

Serious Smile Thinking
I’m a much better writer for being a father.
CHRIS CLEAVE

Being Better Father Much
If I can’t write it would be as if I died.
CHRIS CLEAVE

Chasing Destroy Died Writing
Nobody has the time to sit down and explain the first world from first principles.
CHRIS CLEAVE

Down Nobody Principles World
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.
CHRIS CLEAVE

Dating Grandmother Men
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.
CHRIS CLEAVE

Enough Jingoism War
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
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 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
[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 CLEAVE

Children Teacher War
And thus love makes fools of us all.
CHRIS CLEAVE

Fool Love Make Thus
I am a woman built upon the wreckage of myself.
CHRIS CLEAVE

Built Woman Wreckage
I know that the hopes of this whole human world can fit inside one soul.
CHRIS CLEAVE

Fit Soul World
Yet war doesn’t end with armistice, it only ends with forgiveness and reconciliation.
CHRIS CLEAVE

Armistice Ends War

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”.

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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”.

Related Topics

Popular Authors

More Chris Cleave Quotes