02UndatedMurder me with bombs you poor lonely sod I will only build myself again and stronger. I am too stupid to know better I am a woman built on the wreckage of myself.Chris Cleave / quote ↗
03UndatedThe true moments of one's life were sadder for the fact that they must always be synchronized with the ordinary: with rail timetables, with breaks in traffic.Chris Cleave / quote ↗
04UndatedThere are countries of the world, and regions of one's own mind, where it is unwise to travel.Chris Cleave / quote ↗
05UndatedOn the girl's brown legs there were many small white scars. I was thinking, Do those scars cover the whole of you, like the stars and the moons on your dress? I thought that would be pretty too, and I ask you right here please to agree with me that a scar is never ugly. That is what the scar makers want us to think. But you and I, we must make an agreement to defy them. We must see all scars as beauty. Okay? This will be our secret. Because take it from me, a scar does not form on the dying. A scar means, I survived.Chris Cleave / quote ↗
06UndatedMary leaned back, exhaled, and watched her smoke rise. 'What sort of man do you want anyway?'"Tall. Funny. Never came top of his class or pulled the wings off bees.""Yes, but I mean really? When all of this is over, and assuming we win -" ...Hilda snorted. "(I) just want a tall man and a stiff drink. You could even swap the adjectives.Chris Cleave / quote ↗
07UndatedFor me and the girls from my village, horror is a disease and we are sick with it. It is not an illness you can cure yourself of by standing up and letting the big red cinema seat fold itself up behind you.Chris Cleave / quote ↗
09UndatedPutting down the power right from the whistle would be ugly and brutal, but it would get the job done. He wanted to tell her that, but this was the thing with coaching: you had to step back at exactly the moment you ached to step forward.Chris Cleave / quote ↗
11UndatedI did not want to tell her what happened, but I had to now. 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 / quote ↗
13UndatedOn the girl’s brown legs there were many small white scars. I was thinking, Do those scars cover the whole of you, like the stars and moons on your dress? I thought that would be pretty too, and I ask you right here please to agree with me that a scar is never ugly. That is what the scar makers want us to think. But you and I, we must make an agreement to defy them. We must see all scars a s beauty. Okay? This will be our secret. Because take it from me, a scar does not form on the dying. A scar means, ‘I survived’.In a few breaths’ time I will speak some sad words to you. But you must hear them as we have agreed to see scars now. Sad words are just another beauty. A sad story means the storyteller is alive. The next thing you know, something fine will happen to her, something marvellous, and then she will turn round and smile.Chris Cleave / quote ↗
14UndatedI ask you right here please to agree with me that a scar is never ugly. That is what the scar makers want us to think. But (...) we must see all scars as beauty. (...) Because take it from me, a scar does not form on the dying. A scar means, 'I survived'.Chris Cleave / quote ↗
15UndatedI understand that your brain is large and perpetually at war with itselfChris Cleave / quote ↗
16UndatedI 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 / quote ↗
17UndatedHe really had experienced every tiniest increment of time in the four decades since then, and yet here he was surprised to be suddenly old and crippled. Turned out the rope didn't care if you noticed every daisy on the path to the gallows.Chris Cleave / quote ↗
18UndatedWhen death comes you do not stay for one minute in the place it has visited. Many things arrive after death-sadness, questions, and policemen- and none of these can be answered when your papers are not in order.Chris Cleave / quote ↗
20Undated...disaster, when it is quite sure of its own strength, will announce itself by hardly moving its lips...Chris Cleave / quote ↗
22UndatedWe were exiles from reality that summer. We were refugees from ourselves.Chris Cleave / quote ↗
23UndatedAfter the war of course it will be like the start of spring, which is always so brilliantly sudden. The leaves will burst back onto the trees and close the gaps between the branches and we shall be startled - shan't we? - s we are startled at the end of every winter. We shall think: oh, I had quite forgotten there were three livable seasons.Chris Cleave / quote ↗
24UndatedBefore you bombed my boy Osama I always thought an explosion was such a quick thing but now I know better. The flash is over very fast but the fire catches hold inside you and the noise never stops…I live in an inferno where you could shiver with cold Osama. This life is a deafening roar but listen. You could hear a pin drop.Chris Cleave / quote ↗