Quote

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

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Chris Cleave
Age: 51
Born: 1973
Born: May 14
Journalist
Novelist
Writer
London
England
Mets
Grandfather
Tragedy
Badly
Indeed
Dating
Blitz
Came
Bombs
Maternal
Men
Grandmother
Bomb
Cinema
Beside
Killed
Wounded
London
Roof

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WWII was, without exaggeration, the biggest event in all of human history, and it is still within living memory.
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I’m telling you, trouble is like the ocean. It covers two thirds of the world.
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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.
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The ways in which we are able to express courage also depend on the hand life deals us.
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My whole life is my work.
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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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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?
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I'm a much better writer for being a father.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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