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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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Chris Cleave
Age: 51
Born: 1973
Born: May 14
Journalist
Novelist
Writer
London
England
Within
Living
History
Exaggeration
Stills
Event
Still
Biggest
Human
Memory
Humans
Events
Without
Memories
More quotes by Chris Cleave
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.
Chris Cleave
I was carrying two cargoes. Yes, one of them was horror, but the other one was hope.
Chris Cleave
[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
Looking after a very sick child was the Olympics of parenting.
Chris Cleave
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
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.
Chris Cleave
I'm not happy with just repeating myself.
Chris Cleave
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
People wonder how they are ever going to change their lives, but really it is frighteningly easy.
Chris Cleave
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
Yet war doesn't end with armistice, it only ends with forgiveness and reconciliation.
Chris Cleave
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
The ways in which we are able to express courage also depend on the hand life deals us.
Chris Cleave
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
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
I am a woman built upon the wreckage of myself.
Chris Cleave
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
I think, in common with a lot of novelists, I wasn't the most athletic guy at school.
Chris Cleave
My whole life is my work.
Chris Cleave
Life is savagely unfair. It ignores our deep-seated convictions and places a disproportionate emphasis on the decisions we make in split seconds.
Chris Cleave
