Quote

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

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
Faces
Beatings
Men
Swollen
Life
Severe
Fats
Pretend
Smile
Face

More quotes by Chris Cleave

Image
And thus love makes fools of us all.
Chris Cleave
Image
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
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
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
Yet war doesn't end with armistice, it only ends with forgiveness and reconciliation.
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
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
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.
Chris Cleave
Image
We cannot choose where to start and stop. Our stories are the tellers of us.
Chris Cleave
Image
Andrew had a gift for deepening the incision he began.
Chris Cleave
Image
I’m telling you, trouble is like the ocean. It covers two thirds of the world.
Chris Cleave
Image
I think bravery means a different thing to everyone.
Chris Cleave
Image
Something I am now convinced of, after researching Everyone Brave, is that none of us is born courageous in all respects.
Chris Cleave
Image
I think that the relationship between two top-level athletes who are rivals is one of the most fascinating human relationships to explore. It's always one atom away from being a tragedy.
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
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
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
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
Image
Sad words are just another beauty. A sad story means, this storyteller is alive
Chris Cleave
Image
At some point you just have to turn around and face your life head on.
Chris Cleave