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 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.
More Chris Cleave Quotes
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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.
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I think bravery means a different thing to everyone.
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I am a woman built upon the wreckage of myself.
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We were exiles from reality that summer. We were refugees from ourselves.
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I’m really interested in people’s decisions.
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Sad words are just another beauty. A sad story means, this storyteller is alive
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WWII was, without exaggeration, the biggest event in all of human history, and it is still within living memory.
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Nobody has the time to sit down and explain the first world from first principles.
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Horror in your country is something you take a dose of to remind yourself that you are not suffering from it.
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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.
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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.
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If I can’t write it would be as if I died.
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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.
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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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I’m not happy with just repeating myself.
CHRIS CLEAVE