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I am a woman built upon the wreckage of myself.

Chris Cleave

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Chris Cleave
Age: 51
Born: 1973
Born: May 14
Journalist
Novelist
Writer
London
England
Upon
Woman
Wreckage
Built

More quotes by Chris Cleave

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Our stories are the tellers of us.
Chris Cleave
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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.
Chris Cleave
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Sad words are just another beauty. A sad story means, this storyteller is alive
Chris Cleave
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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
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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
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I was carrying two cargoes. Yes, one of them was horror, but the other one was hope.
Chris Cleave
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It was hard not to be full of hope
Chris Cleave
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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
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The only bad days as a writer are the ones when you are too cowardly or too lazy to sit down at the keyboard and give it everything you have.
Chris Cleave
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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
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So when I say that I am a refugee, you must understand that there is no refuge.
Chris Cleave
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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.
Chris Cleave
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There's what people say, and there's what people mean, and I like to explore the difference between the two.
Chris Cleave
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However long the moon disappears, someday it must shine again.
Chris Cleave
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The Daily Mail can't say 'asylum-seeker' without saying 'foreign criminal' in the same sentence. I'm sure it's practically editorial policy.
Chris Cleave
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Nobody has the time to sit down and explain the first world from first principles.
Chris Cleave
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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
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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.
Chris Cleave
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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.
Chris Cleave
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I think, in common with a lot of novelists, I wasn't the most athletic guy at school.
Chris Cleave