I understand that your brain is large and perpetually at war with itself

— Chris Cleave

I want to be a journalist again. I want to make a difference in the world.

— Chris Cleave

Let them say whatever gives them comfort.

— Chris Cleave

Life took longer to reassemble than it did to blow apart, but that didn't mean it wouldn't be lovely, providing that one remembered to go for country walks, and to tune the wireless to music.

— Chris Cleave

Looking after a very sick child was the Olympics of parenting.

— 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.

— Chris Cleave

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.

— Chris Cleave

On a bike ride through the Surrey Lanes, pedaling in my cotton dress through the hot fields blushing with poppies, freewheeling down a sudden dip into a cool wooded sanctum.

— Chris Cleave

One could always imagine that one's life, though smoldering in parts, might be undamaged in the west.

— Chris Cleave

One could always imagine that one's life, though smoldering parts, might be undamaged in the west." "We also serve who live with grace." "If there had been more time, or less, it all would have been easier. If it's an hour one can say what one likes. If it's a year, one can be what one is like. A day is exactly the wrong length of time to be oneself in, don't you think?" "In the end I suppose we lay flowers on a grave because we cannot lay ourselves on it." "The dead were filthy, half buried, sometimes barely distinguishable from the mud or the rubble they lay in. 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." Life took longer to reassemble than it did to blow apart, but that didn't mean it wouldn't be lovely, providing that one remembered to go for country walks, and to tune the wireless to music.

— Chris Cleave