Quote

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

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

Chris Cleave
Age: 51
Born: 1973
Born: May 14
Journalist
Novelist
Writer
London
England
Stop
Start
Talking
Story
Cannot
Tellers
Stories
Finished
Wanted
Choose
Writing
Started

More quotes by Chris Cleave

Image
Life is savagely unfair. It ignores our deep-seated convictions and places a disproportionate emphasis on the decisions we make in split seconds.
Chris Cleave
Image
Sad words are just another beauty. A sad story means, this storyteller is alive
Chris Cleave
Image
My whole life is my work.
Chris Cleave
Image
In a few breaths' time I will speak some sad words to you. But you must hear them the same way we have agreed to see scars now. Sad words are just another beauty.
Chris Cleave
Image
Our stories are the tellers of us.
Chris Cleave
Image
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
Image
People wonder how they are ever going to change their lives, but really it is frighteningly easy.
Chris Cleave
Image
Nobody has the time to sit down and explain the first world from first principles.
Chris Cleave
Image
Yet war doesn't end with armistice, it only ends with forgiveness and reconciliation.
Chris Cleave
Image
I think the recent cluster of WWII novels is so good because we have reached an optimal distance from the war. Just as a lens has its focal length, the novel also has its best distance from the action.
Chris Cleave
Image
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
Image
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
Image
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
Image
However long the moon disappears, someday it must shine again.
Chris Cleave
Image
I think bravery means a different thing to everyone.
Chris Cleave
Image
The ways in which we are able to express courage also depend on the hand life deals us.
Chris Cleave
Image
Would we be the heroes or the cowards of the piece? Would we follow orders or stick to our principles, if those two things ever conflicted? Would we be the brave ones who still found the capacity for love - and for laughter - even while we were terrified?
Chris Cleave
Image
your culture has become sophisticated, like a computer, or a drug that you take for a headache. You can use it, but you cannot explain how it works. Certainly not to girls who stack up their firewood against the side of the house.
Chris Cleave
Image
I think that there's something extremely beautiful about the Olympic ideal and its motto - 'Swifter, higher, stronger' - it's such a beautiful motto, and it celebrates everything which is the antithesis of death and dissolution and entropy.
Chris Cleave
Image
I am a woman built upon the wreckage of myself.
Chris Cleave