Chris Cleave
Quotes by Chris Cleave
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Murder 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.
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What is the good of influence if one can only use it on strangers?
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I want to be a journalist again. I want to make a difference in the world.
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Exposing corruption, brandishing truth.
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You are a mousetrap of a friend, all soft cheese and hard springs
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on a bike ride through the Surrey Lanes, pedalling in my cotton dress through the hot fields blushing with poppies, freewheeling down a sudden dip into a cool wooded sanctum.
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One didn't understand, until one had seen a great many bodies, the unconscious effort that one must be making every minute simply to keep one's hands and face and clothes clean. The world's surfaces were so filthy that the living touched them only with the tips of their fingers and the soles of their shoes. How grubby it was to die, to give up making that effort.
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This helpful war. It makes us better people and then it tries to kill us.
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I move we get more wine,' Alistair said. 'What does the panel think?'...It was obvious that the entire war could be solved in this way. The trick would be to reach for a corkscrew instead, every time some brass hat ordered artillery.
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I suppose we ought to be getting home, in any case.—"Oh god, is it wartime already?"—Look on the bright side: it'll be dinner when we get back.
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Her mother set to with the hairbrush again. "But would that be so awful, darling? To be the prettiest thing in Brimscombe-and-Thrupp?""I should rather die.""You nearly did."—Yes, but I tend to blame the Germans.
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There in the sweet sacking smell of the mail bags he understood that he was dying, and it pleased him that he was going in the company of so many soft words home.
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The first problem of war was that no one was any good at it yet.
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Everything can be restored. If one won't believe that, how does one endure all this?
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Alistair smiled. 'How long this war has been.''I'll say. One hardly remembers how we lived before. Lightly - not worrying much.''Do you suppose we shall ever live that way again?''Oh, who knows? Given sufficient champagne and ether.''Maybe if we stay drunk to the end of our days we shan't remember.
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People spoke in whispers, as if the war was listening
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She knew, now, why her father had not spoken of the last war, nor Alistair of his. It was hardly fair on the living.
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There was less of him now. There was less of them all. Officers and men dragged themselves around in uniforms three sizes too big, new holes punched into every belt, every collar hanging loose. They were a garrison of skinny boys performing a play about soldiers.
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They spoke of small things at first, since it was best, when reattaching threads, to begin with the easiest knots.
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Sorry. But it isn't for us to change how things are. I'm just an administrator. You're just a teacher.—"Oh, I hope I don't teach. Because look what we did: we saved the zoo animals and the nice children and we damned the afflicted and the blacks. You know what I do every day in that classroom? I do everything in my power to make sure those poor souls won't learn the obvious lesson.""If I were you," said Tom, "I should stick to reading, writing and arithmetic."—But what good is it to teach a child to count, if you don't show him that he counts for something?
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