Latest Chris Cleave Quotes from Interviews

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• I do think it is harder to acknowledge our strengths, or to forgive ourselves and each other for our shortcomings, when there has not been a result we can all agree on. And it is certainly impossible to imagine forgiving the enemy while their animus remains undefeated. Yet war doesn't end with armistice, it only ends with forgiveness and reconciliation.

  Chris Cleave

  War, Thinking, Forgiving

  "'We Don't Know Our Hearts Until Life Puts Us to the Test'--Chris Cleave on 'Everyone Brave Is Forgiven'". Interview with Erin Kodicek, www.amazonbookreview.com. May 31, 2016.

• We must constantly dare ourselves in the small things, until courage becomes a habit of mind that will serve us when we are unexpectedly tested.

  Chris Cleave

  Mind, Habit, Dare

  "'We Don't Know Our Hearts Until Life Puts Us to the Test'--Chris Cleave on 'Everyone Brave Is Forgiven'". Interview With Erin Kodicek, www.amazonbookreview.com. May 31, 2016.

• Courage is a muscle that develops through use. It's no use waiting for some inner fire to conveniently become apparent at the moment of crisis - that's cartoon stuff.

  Chris Cleave

  Fire, Waiting, Cartoon

  "'We Don't Know Our Hearts Until Life Puts Us to the Test'--Chris Cleave on 'Everyone Brave Is Forgiven'". Interview With Erin Kodicek, www.amazonbookreview.com. May 31, 2016.

• Something I am now convinced of, after researching Everyone Brave, is that none of us is born courageous in all respects.

  Chris Cleave

  Brave, Courageous, Born

  Source: www.omnivoracious.com

• It is easier for a rich person to act on their principles than it is for someone with fewer choices (which is why it is all the more disappointing when a wealthy person plays to the crowd).

  Chris Cleave

  Play, Choices, Principles

  "'We Don't Know Our Hearts Until Life Puts Us to the Test'--Chris Cleave on 'Everyone Brave Is Forgiven'". Interview With Erin Kodicek, www.amazonbookreview.com. May 31, 2016.

• The ways in which we are able to express courage also depend on the hand life deals us.

  Chris Cleave

  Hands, Able, Way

  "'We Don't Know Our Hearts Until Life Puts Us to the Test'--Chris Cleave on 'Everyone Brave Is Forgiven'". Interview With Erin Kodicek, www.amazonbookreview.com. May 31, 2016.

• Things that we have to really dare ourselves to do come quite naturally to others.

  Chris Cleave

  Dare

  "'We Don't Know Our Hearts Until Life Puts Us to the Test'--Chris Cleave on 'Everyone Brave Is Forgiven'". Interview With Erin Kodicek, www.amazonbookreview.com. May 31, 2016.

• Sometimes we don't notice that someone is being brave, because they are only doing something that seems quite easy for us.

  Chris Cleave

  Brave, Sometimes, Easy

  ""We Don't Know Our Hearts Until Life Puts Us to the Test"--Chris Cleave on 'Everyone Brave Is Forgiven'". Interview With Erin Kodicek, www.amazonbookreview.com. May 31, 2016.

• Our own personal brand of courage - in relationships, in conflict, in our principles ­ - is as unique as our fingerprints.

  Chris Cleave

  Unique, Principles, Conflict

  "'We Don't Know Our Hearts Until Life Puts Us to the Test'--Chris Cleave on 'Everyone Brave Is Forgiven'". Interview With Erin Kodicek, www.amazonbookreview.com. May 31, 2016.

• I think bravery means a different thing to everyone.

  Chris Cleave

  Mean, Thinking, Bravery

  "'We Don't Know Our Hearts Until Life Puts Us to the Test'--Chris Cleave on 'Everyone Brave Is Forgiven'". Interview With Erin Kodicek, www.amazonbookreview.com. May 31, 2016.

• When I reached Fort Binjemma, for example, where my grandfather was stationed for a while, the whole Victorian fort was decaying. Barbed wire surrounded it, spray paint on the ancient walls claimed it as private property, and the moat where my grandfather and his men had grown crops - in desperation as the siege's hunger bit - was completely overgrown with bushes and trees.

  Chris Cleave

  Wall, Men, Tree

  "'We Don't Know Our Hearts Until Life Puts Us to the Test' - Chris Cleave on 'Everyone Brave Is Forgiven'". Interview with Erin Kodicek, www.amazonbookreview.com. May 31, 2016.

• I was astonished to find that the positions my grandfather had defended were now overgrown and entangled with trees and thorns. I suppose I had developed a sense of reverence for the locations he described in his memoirs and letters - the forts and the high emplacements. I had expected them to have been preserved in some way.

  Chris Cleave

  Tree, Grandfather, Location

  "'We Don't Know Our Hearts Until Life Puts Us to the Test'--Chris Cleave on 'Everyone Brave Is Forgiven'". Interview With Erin Kodicek, www.amazonbookreview.com. May 31, 2016.

• I wanted to look at the differences between how we fought then and how we fight now, because the current lack of closure generates a state of psychological unease that is interesting to acknowledge and examine.

  Chris Cleave

  Fighting, Differences, Interesting

  "'We Don't Know Our Hearts Until Life Puts Us to the Test'--Chris Cleave on 'Everyone Brave Is Forgiven'". Interview With Erin Kodicek, www.amazonbookreview.com. May 31, 2016.

• Yet war doesn't end with armistice, it only ends with forgiveness and reconciliation.

  Chris Cleave

  War, Ends, Armistice

  "'We Don't Know Our Hearts Until Life Puts Us to the Test'--Chris Cleave on 'Everyone Brave Is Forgiven'". Interview With Erin Kodicek, www.amazonbookreview.com. May 31, 2016.

• It is certainly impossible to imagine forgiving the enemy while their animus remains undefeated.

  Chris Cleave

  Forgiving, Enemy, Impossible

  ""We Don't Know Our Hearts Until Life Puts Us to the Test"--Chris Cleave on 'Everyone Brave Is Forgiven'". Interview With Erin Kodicek, www.amazonbookreview.com. May 31, 2016.

• I do think it is harder to acknowledge our strengths, or to forgive ourselves and each other for our shortcomings, when there has not been a result we can all agree on.

  Chris Cleave

  Thinking, Forgiving, Results

  "'We Don't Know Our Hearts Until Life Puts Us to the Test' - Chris Cleave on 'Everyone Brave Is Forgiven'". Interview with Erin Kodicek, www.amazonbookreview.com. May 31, 2016.

• I write in the novel's afterword that our recent wars "finish not with victory or defeat but with a calendar draw-down date and a presumption that we shall never be reconciled with the enemy".

  Chris Cleave

  War, Writing, Enemy

  ""We Don't Know Our Hearts Until Life Puts Us to the Test"--Chris Cleave on 'Everyone Brave Is Forgiven'". Interview With Erin Kodicek, www.amazonbookreview.com. May 31, 2016.

• My paternal grandmother drove ambulances during the regional Blitz, in Birmingham.

  Chris Cleave

  Grandmother, Birmingham, Ambulance

  ""We Don't Know Our Hearts Until Life Puts Us to the Test"--Chris Cleave on 'Everyone Brave Is Forgiven'". Interview With Erin Kodicek, www.amazonbookreview.com. May 31, 2016.

• [My maternal grandmother ] was a teacher in London and elsewhere during the war, although the children she taught were not the "lost children" who feature in the novel - those come from my research.

  Chris Cleave

  Teacher, Children, War

  Source: www.omnivoracious.com

• My maternal grandmother was in London during the Blitz. Indeed, the man she was dating before she met my grandfather was killed beside her in a cinema, in 1941, when a bomb came through the roof - a tragedy in which she herself was badly wounded.

  Chris Cleave

  Grandmother, Men, Dating

  "'We Don't Know Our Hearts Until Life Puts Us to the Test'--Chris Cleave on 'Everyone Brave Is Forgiven'". Interview With Erin Kodicek, www.amazonbookreview.com. May 31, 2016.

• We no longer need to show people being brave: instead, we can examine how they became brave. We can assume that they didn't start out that way. If we allow that they started out just like us, then their journey into courage becomes both more fascinating and more impressive.

  Chris Cleave

  Journey, People, Brave

  "'We Don't Know Our Hearts Until Life Puts Us to the Test'--Chris Cleave on 'Everyone Brave Is Forgiven'". Interview With Erin Kodicek, www.amazonbookreview.com. May 31, 2016.

• At this point in time the war [ WWII] is close enough to still feel hotly personal to a writer, yet far enough away so that jingoism and heroics are no longer required.

  Chris Cleave

  War, Jingoism, Enough

  Source: www.omnivoracious.com

• I think the recent cluster of WWII novels is so good because we have reached an optimal distance from the war. Just as a lens has its focal length, the novel also has its best distance from the action.

  Chris Cleave

  War, Distance, Thinking

  "'We Don't Know Our Hearts Until Life Puts Us to the Test' - Chris Cleave on 'Everyone Brave Is Forgiven'". Interview with Erin Kodicek, www.amazonbookreview.com. May 31, 2016.

• We leave it up to books and movies to talk about WWII on our behalf.

  Chris Cleave

  Book, Books And Movies, Wwii

  ""We Don't Know Our Hearts Until Life Puts Us to the Test"--Chris Cleave on 'Everyone Brave Is Forgiven'". Interview With Erin Kodicek, www.amazonbookreview.com. May 31, 2016.

• Everyone carries the weight of WWII with them in their recent family history, and yet it is rarely spoken about within families, because veterans and survivors don't tend to talk.

  Chris Cleave

  Survivor, Weight, Veteran

  Source: www.omnivoracious.com