Quote

You may think that's funny Osama but you never can squeeze every last bit of pride out of a human being. It's like a tube of toothpaste. You can twist it and you can crush it but there's always a tiny bit left isn't there?

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
Every
Bits
Tube
Always
Lasts
Squeeze
Never
Last
Twist
Think
Funny
Tubes
Thinking
Left
Twists
Like
May
Crush
Human
Tiny
Humans
Pride
Toothpaste

More quotes by Chris Cleave

Image
Looking after a very sick child was the Olympics of parenting.
Chris Cleave
Image
There was no quick grief for Andrew because he had been so slowly lost. First from my heart, then from my mind, and only finally from my life.
Chris Cleave
Image
It's extremely hard for athletes to accept what's happened to them sometimes. It's hard to be beaten by a small margin, and I've spoken with athletes who, for years afterward, have been tormented by the knowledge that, had they done something ever so slightly different, they could have been one-ten-thousandth of a second quicker.
Chris Cleave
Image
I like to push characters to extremes so they have to make really tough decisions and there is no life more extreme than that of an athlete.
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
Sad words are just another beauty. A sad story means, this storyteller is alive
Chris Cleave
Image
It was the month of May and there was warm sunshine dripping through the holes between the clouds, like the sky was a broken blue bowl and a child was trying to keep honey in it.
Chris Cleave
Image
Our stories are the tellers of us.
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
[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
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
Courage is a muscle that develops through use. It's no use waiting for some inner fire to conveniently become apparent at the moment of crisis - that's cartoon stuff.
Chris Cleave
Image
So when I say that I am a refugee, you must understand that there is no refuge.
Chris Cleave
Image
I'm a much better writer for being a father.
Chris Cleave
Image
I’m telling you, trouble is like the ocean. It covers two thirds of the world.
Chris Cleave
Image
The future looks like gasoline. . . . crude oil . . . is the future before it has been refined. It is like a dream of the future, really, and like any dream it ends with a rude awakening.
Chris Cleave
Image
The ways in which we are able to express courage also depend on the hand life deals us.
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
My whole life is my work.
Chris Cleave
Image
Everyone carries the weight of WWII with them in their recent family history, and yet it is rarely spoken about within families, because veterans and survivors don't tend to talk.
Chris Cleave