Quotes from Chris Cleave

Yu only be livin one life, darlin. Don't matter yu don't uh-preshie-ate part of it, cos it don't stop bein part of yu.

You are not dumb, Yevette. All of us who have got this far, all of us who have survived- how can we be dumb? Dumb could not come this far,I am telling you.

This was always my trouble when I was learning to speak your language. Every word can defend itself. Just when you go to grab it, it can split into two separate meanings so the understanding closes on empty air. I admire you people. You are like sorcerers and you have made your language as safe as your money.

She supposed she must be in love. That [he] was slightly infuriating, and that she didn't mind in the slightest, might be proof of it.

He felt good for once, he really did. Maybe the deal was that life had to break your body down before you could see it. Maybe there wasn't any other racket in town except this one that brought you to your nadir and challenged you to build yourself back up from it, then showed you that what you'd done at least meant something to someone.

When 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.

How lovely was each breath. How peculiar that one had never noticed.

If this policeman began to suspect me, he could call the immigration people. Then one of them would click a button on their computer and mark a check box on my file and I would be deported. I would be dead, but no one would have fired any bullets. I realized, this is why the police do not carry guns. In a civilized country, they kill you with a click. The killing is done far away, at the heart of the kingdom in a building full of computers and coffee cups.

The Thames was cold and it was the colour of the dishwater at the end of the washing up. I remember looking up through it and seeing the light pale brown and far above and wondering if I would sink farther or float up to it. I stayed down for the longest time Osama. I wouldn't mind drowning but I did float up in the end. Somehow I always seem to.

Who knows which takes more courage—to die in battle, or to live in vain? It cuts all of us in two, I suppose." Hamilton

I thought there'd be some black people." "Hitler will only fight them in separate units. He's a snob.

It was depression that killed Andrew, of course - depression and guilt. But my son didn't believe in death, let alone in the capacity of mere emotions to cause it.

You don't know anything,' she said. 'If you knew one thing about this life you would not think it was so funny.' Yvette put her hands on her hips. She shook her head slowly. 'Darlin,' she said. 'Life did take its gift back from yu and me in de diffren order, dat's all. Truth to tell, funny is all me got lef wid. An yu, darlin, all yu got lef is paperwork.

If the war had proved anything it was that life had unexpected resistance to the instruments with which men had been issued. Simonson

What was war, after all, but morale in helmets and jeeps? And what was morale if not one hundred million little conversations, the sum of which might leave men brave enough to advance? The true heart of war was in small talk.

He stepped on the unexploded artillery shell, and it tore him apart.

When you make a man ashamed, you make him dangerous.

Do you remember back when you felt you could actually do something to make the world better?" "You're talking to the wrong man. I work for central government, remember? Actually doing something is the mistake we're trained to avoid.

We did not have hurry. We did not have electricity or fresh water or sadness either, because none of these had been connected to our village yet.

One phone call: I realized it was as simple as that. People wonder how they are ever going to change their lives, but really it is frighteningly easy.

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.

Without light, how can you keep the sight of the eyes? Without a future, how can you preserve the government? [...] We could have a most dilligent Home Secretary of Lunchtime. We could have an excellent Prime Minister of the Quietest Part of the Late Afternoon. But when twilight comes -do you see?- our world disappears. It cannot see beyond the day because you have taken tomorrow. And because you have tomorrow in front of your eyes, you cannot see what is being done today.

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.

a scar is never ugly. That is what the scar makers want us to think. . . 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. In a few breaths' time I will speak some sad words to you... You must hear them the way we have agreed to see scars now. Sad words are just another beauty. A sad story means, this storyteller is alive.