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If your face is swollen from the severe beatings of life, smile and pretend to be a fat man.

Chris Cleave

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Chris Cleave
Age: 51
Born: 1973
Born: May 14
Journalist
Novelist
Writer
London
England
Smile
Face
Faces
Beatings
Men
Swollen
Life
Severe
Fats
Pretend

More quotes by Chris Cleave

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So when I say that I am a refugee, you must understand that there is no refuge.
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Wouldn't that be funny, if the oil rebels were playing U2 in their jungle camps, and the government soldiers were playing U2 in their trucks. I think everyone was killing everyone else and listening to the same music... That is a good trick about this world, Sarah. No one likes each other, but everyone likes U2.
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Still shaking, in the pew, I understood that it isn't the dead we cry for. We cry for ourselves, and I didn't deserve my own pity.
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I'm not happy with just repeating myself.
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You travel here and you travel there, trying to get out from under the cloud, and nothing works, and then one day you realize you've been carrying the weather around with you.
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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.
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Life is extremely short and you cannot dance to current affairs.
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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.
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This is the forked tongue of grief again. It whispers in one ear: return to what you once loved best, and in the other ear it whispers, move on.
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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.
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I think, in common with a lot of novelists, I wasn't the most athletic guy at school.
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Andrew had a gift for deepening the incision he began.
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Yet war doesn't end with armistice, it only ends with forgiveness and reconciliation.
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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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I'm a much better writer for being a father.
Chris Cleave
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Looking after a very sick child was the Olympics of parenting.
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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.
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Our own personal brand of courage - in relationships, in conflict, in our principles ­ - is as unique as our fingerprints.
Chris Cleave
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WWII was, without exaggeration, the biggest event in all of human history, and it is still within living memory.
Chris Cleave
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I was carrying two cargoes. Yes, one of them was horror, but the other one was hope.
Chris Cleave