Quotes from Chris Cleave

Mary 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.

Citius, Altius, Fortius

In the quiet of the garden then the robin shook his worm, and swallowed its life from the light into darkness with the quick indifference of a god.

occurred to him that no one who hadn't been in battle could know what things were worth.

The first problem of war was that no one was any good at it yet.

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.

Here was the remainder of ten thousand educations, the bones drifted down to this depth. It was the fossil of one's country. She ached, because the war had cut the thin cord that bound each child to its ancestors with links made from cross-stitch and calligraphy.

Then I'm tempted to die just to … spite him." "That's the spirit that will win us the war.

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.

It was not warm and not cold. There was no wind and the sky was very low and grey but it wasn't raining. It was like they'd completely run out of weather.

We never tasted tea in my village, even though they grow it in the east of my country, where the land rises up into the clouds and the trees grow long soft beards of moss from the wet air. There in the east, the plantations stretch up the green hillsides and vanish into the mist. The tea they grow, that vanishes too. I think all of it is exported. Myself I never tasted tea until I was exported with it.

Yu can't live if yu dead, neither. Yu probly too smart to get dat.

Everyone in my village liked U2," I said. "Everyone in my country, maybe. Wouldn't that be funny, if the oil rebels were playing U2 in their trucks. I think everyone was killing everyone else and listening to the same music. Do you know what? The first week I was in the detention center, U2 were number one here too. That is a good trick about this world, Sarah. No one likes each other, but everyone likes U2.

Siz makineler dünyas?nda ya??yorsunuz ve kalbi çarpan ?eylerin dü?ünü kuruyorsunuz.Biz makineleri dü?lüyoruz çünkü çarpan kalplerin bizi terk etti?ini gördük.

But the door …' Tom grinned. 'Was only ever in your mind.

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'.

Sarah has had the middle finger of her left hand amputated] and she says that when she types: I can't rely on E,D, and C anymore. They go missing when I need them most. Pleased becomes please. Ecstasies becomes stasis.

I was hoping my life might make more sense from a great height.

Mary had written the names of her thirty-one children on brown luggage labels and looped them through the top buttonholes of their overcoats. Of course the children had exchanged labels with one another the second her back was turned. They were only human, even if they hadn't yet made the effort to become tall.

You ever wonder why an East Eng girl like me hasn't got much in the way of family? Well here's the reasons Petra. World War 1. World War 2. Falklands War. Gulf War 1. Gulf War 2 and the War on Drugs. You can take your pick because I've lost whole bloody chunks of my family in all of them.

The mourners clustered around the edge of the grave, paralyzed by the horror of this thing, this first discovery of death that was worse than the death itself.

It is possible to do good things with an imperfect situation.

Just beyond your sight, life might be moving in ways that were moments away from being revealed to you.

But life is not inclined to let any of us escape.