After 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

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.

— Chris Cleave

Andrew had a gift for deepening the incision he began.

— Chris Cleave

A scar does not form on the dying. A scar means, I survived.

— Chris Cleave

Before 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

But what good is it to teach a child to count, if you don't show him that he counts for something?

— Chris Cleave

...disaster, when it is quite sure of its own strength, will announce itself by hardly moving its lips...

— Chris Cleave

Do those scars cover the whole of you, like the stars and the moons on your less? 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 dying. A scar means, I survived.

— Chris Cleave

Everything can be restored. If one won't believe that, how does one endure all this?

— Chris Cleave

Exposing corruption, brandishing truth.

— Chris Cleave