Quote

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

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

Chris Cleave
Age: 51
Born: 1973
Born: May 14
Journalist
Novelist
Writer
London
England
Character
Extreme
Really
Extremes
Make
Push
Life
Athlete
Like
Decisions
Characters
Tough
Decision

More quotes by 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
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
My maternal grandmother was in London during the Blitz. Indeed, the man she was dating before she met my grandfather was killed beside her in a cinema, in 1941, when a bomb came through the roof - a tragedy in which she herself was badly wounded.
Chris Cleave
Image
I am a woman built upon the wreckage of myself.
Chris Cleave
Image
I wanted to look at the differences between how we fought then and how we fight now, because the current lack of closure generates a state of psychological unease that is interesting to acknowledge and examine.
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
The ways in which we are able to express courage also depend on the hand life deals us.
Chris Cleave
Image
WWII was, without exaggeration, the biggest event in all of human history, and it is still within living memory.
Chris Cleave
Image
So when I say that I am a refugee, you must understand that there is no refuge.
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
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
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
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
It was hard not to be full of hope
Chris Cleave
Image
I’m telling you, trouble is like the ocean. It covers two thirds of the world.
Chris Cleave
Image
There's what people say, and there's what people mean, and I like to explore the difference between the two.
Chris Cleave
Image
I think, in common with a lot of novelists, I wasn't the most athletic guy at school.
Chris Cleave
Image
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
Image
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
Image
We cannot choose where to start and stop. Our stories are the tellers of us.
Chris Cleave