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We Leave It Up To Books And Movies To Talk About Wwii On Our Behalf.

-Chris Cleave

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We Leave It Up

Chris Cleave

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We Leave It Up To Books And Movies To Talk About Wwii On Our Behalf.

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Books And Movies

More From Chris Cleave

[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.

My Whole Life Is My Work.

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.

So When I Say That I Am A Refugee, You Must Understand That There Is No Refuge.

Even For A Girl Like Me, Then, There Comes A Day When She Can Stop Surviving And Start Living. To Survive, You Have To Look Good Or Talk Good. But To End Your Story Well-- Here Is The Truth-- You Have To Talk Yourself Out Of It.

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.

You Travel Here And You Travel There, Trying To Get Out From Under The Cloud, And Nothing Works, And Then One Day You Realize You've Been Carrying The Weather Around With You.

Wwii Was, Without Exaggeration, The Biggest Event In All Of Human History, And It Is Still Within Living Memory.

On Our Honeymoon We Talked And Talked. We Stayed In A Beachfront Villa, And We Drank Rum And Lemonade And Talked So Much That I Never Even Noticed What Color The Sea Was. Whenever I Need To Stop And Remind Myself How Much I Once Loved Andrew, I Only Need To Think About This. That The Ocean Covers Seven Tenths Of The Earth's Surface, And Yet My Husband Could Make Me Not Notice It.

Psychiatry In This Place Is Like Serving An In-flight Meal In The Middle Of A Plane Crash. If I Wanted To Make You Well, As A Doctor, I Should Be Giving You A Parachute, Not A Cheese-and-pickle Sandwich.

Would We Be The Heroes Or The Cowards Of The Piece? Would We Follow Orders Or Stick To Our Principles, If Those Two Things Ever Conflicted? Would We Be The Brave Ones Who Still Found The Capacity For Love - And For Laughter - Even While We Were Terrified?

We Leave It Up To Books And Movies To Talk About Wwii On Our Behalf.

Books And Movies

However Long The Moon Disappears, Someday It Must Shine Again.

The Only Bad Days As A Writer Are The Ones When You Are Too Cowardly Or Too Lazy To Sit Down At The Keyboard And Give It Everything You Have.

I'm Always Determined That As A Novelist I'm Going To Go Out There And Research My Characters Very Thoroughly Before I Start Writing.

Your Culture Has Become Sophisticated, Like A Computer, Or A Drug That You Take For A Headache. You Can Use It, But You Cannot Explain How It Works. Certainly Not To Girls Who Stack Up Their Firewood Against The Side Of The House.

If I Could Not Smile, I Think My Situation Would Be Even More Serious.

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.

There's What People Say, And There's What People Mean, And I Like To Explore The Difference Between The Two.

This Is The Forked Tongue Of Grief Again. It Whispers In One Ear: Return To What You Once Loved Best, And In The Other Ear It Whispers, Move On.

We're Often Told That We Live In A Globalized World, And We Talk About It All The Time, But People Don't Stop To Think About What It Means.

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.

I’m Telling You, Trouble Is Like The Ocean. It Covers Two Thirds Of The World.

I Think, In Common With A Lot Of Novelists, I Wasn't The Most Athletic Guy At School.

I'm Really Interested In People's Decisions.

Horror In Your Country Is Something You Take A Dose Of To Remind Yourself That You Are Not Suffering From It.

In My World Death Will Come Chasing. In Your World It Will Start Whispering In Your Ear To Destroy Yourself. I Know This Because It Started Whispering To Me When I Was In The Detention Center.

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.

A Scar Does Not Form On The Dying. A Scar Means, I Survived.

There Was No Quick Grief For Andrew Because He Had Been So Slowly Lost. First From My Heart, Then From My Mind, And Only Finally From My Life.

Andrew Had A Gift For Deepening The Incision He Began.

That Is The Trouble With Happiness-all Of It Is Built On Top Of Something That Men Want.

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.

Things That We Have To Really Dare Ourselves To Do Come Quite Naturally To Others.

It Is Certainly Impossible To Imagine Forgiving The Enemy While Their Animus Remains Undefeated.

They Say That In The Hour Before An Earthquake The Clouds Hang Leaden In The Sky, The Winds Slows To A Hot Breath, And The Birds Fall Quiet In The Trees Of The Town Square. Yes But These Are The Same Portents That Precede Lunchtime, Frankly.

Studying Psychology Is Fun Because You're Always Looking For The Same Things I Think A Writer Should Be Looking For, Which Is The Story Behind The Story.

To Be Well In Your Mind You Have First To Be Free.

Sometimes We Don't Notice That Someone Is Being Brave, Because They Are Only Doing Something That Seems Quite Easy For Us.

I Am A Woman Built Upon The Wreckage Of Myself.

My Paternal Grandmother Drove Ambulances During The Regional Blitz, In Birmingham.

It Was Hard Not To Be Full Of Hope

The Future Looks Like Gasoline. . . . Crude Oil . . . Is The Future Before It Has Been Refined. It Is Like A Dream Of The Future, Really, And Like Any Dream It Ends With A Rude Awakening.

You May Think That's Funny Osama But You Never Can Squeeze Every Last Bit Of Pride Out Of A Human Being. It's Like A Tube Of Toothpaste. You Can Twist It And You Can Crush It But There's Always A Tiny Bit Left Isn't There?

Looking After A Very Sick Child Was The Olympics Of Parenting.

The Daily Mail Can't Say 'asylum-seeker' Without Saying 'foreign Criminal' In The Same Sentence. I'm Sure It's Practically Editorial Policy.

Sad Words Are Just Another Beauty. A Sad Story Means, This Storyteller Is Alive

I Was Carrying Two Cargoes. Yes, One Of Them Was Horror, But The Other One Was Hope.

I'm A Much Better Writer For Being A Father.

I'm Not Happy With Just Repeating Myself.

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).

Nobody Has The Time To Sit Down And Explain The First World From First Principles.

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'.

It's Extremely Hard For Athletes To Accept What's Happened To Them Sometimes. It's Hard To Be Beaten By A Small Margin, And I've Spoken With Athletes Who, For Years Afterward, Have Been Tormented By The Knowledge That, Had They Done Something Ever So Slightly Different, They Could Have Been One-ten-thousandth Of A Second Quicker.

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.

We Don't Know Our Hearts Until Life Puts Us To The Test, And Wwii Fascinates Because It Was The Last Time Everyone Was Simultaneously Pushed To Their Limit.

What Is An Adventure? That Depends On Where You Are Starting From. Little Girls In Your Country, They Hide In The Gap Between The Washing Machine And The Refrigerator And They Make Believe They Are In The Jungle, With Green Snakes And Monkeys All Around Them. Me And My Sister, We Used To Hide In A Gap In The Jungle, With Green Snakes And Monkeys All Around Us, And Make Believe That We Had A Washing Machine And A Refrigerator. You Live In A World Of Machines And You Dream Off Things With Beating Hearts. We Dream Of Machines, Because We See Where Beating Hearts Have Left Us.

And Thus Love Makes Fools Of Us All.

I Could Not Stop Talking Because Now I Had Started My Story, It Wanted To Be Finished. We Cannot Choose Where To Start And Stop. Our Stories Are The Tellers Of Us.

Life Is Savagely Unfair. It Ignores Our Deep-seated Convictions And Places A Disproportionate Emphasis On The Decisions We Make In Split Seconds.

Decisions We Make

I Think My Ideal Man Would Speak Many Languages. He Would Speak Ibo And Yoruba And English And French And All Of The Others. He Could Speak With Any Person, Even The Soldiers, And If There Was Violence In Their Heart He Could Change It. He Would Not Have To Fight, Do You See? Maybe He Would Not Be Very Handsome, But He Would Be Beautiful When He Spoke. He Would Be Very Kind, Even If You Burned His Food Because You Were Laughing And Talking With Your Girlfriends Instead Of Watching The Cooking. He Would Just Say, 'ah, Never Mind'.

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".

Still Shaking, In The Pew, I Understood That It Isn't The Dead We Cry For. We Cry For Ourselves, And I Didn't Deserve My Own Pity.

I Like To Push Characters To Extremes So They Have To Make Really Tough Decisions And There Is No Life More Extreme Than That Of An Athlete.

I Think All Of Us Are Intrigued To Imagine What We As Individuals Would Become, If We Were Ever Tested As Hard As That Golden Generation Was.

The Ways In Which We Are Able To Express Courage Also Depend On The Hand Life Deals Us.

I Know That The Hopes Of This Whole Human World Can Fit Inside One Soul.

This Thing With Being Lovers, It Isn't Like Being Married.

I Think That There's Something Extremely Beautiful About The Olympic Ideal And Its Motto - 'swifter, Higher, Stronger' - It's Such A Beautiful Motto, And It Celebrates Everything Which Is The Antithesis Of Death And Dissolution And Entropy.

People Wonder How They Are Ever Going To Change Their Lives, But Really It Is Frighteningly Easy.

Our Stories Are The Tellers Of Us.

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.

I Think Bravery Means A Different Thing To Everyone.

Sad Words Are Just Another Beauty. A Sad Story Means, This Storyteller Is Alive. The Next Thing You Know Something Fine Will Happen To Her, Something Marvelous, And Then She Will Turn Around And Smile.

At Some Point You Just Have To Turn Around And Face Your Life Head On.

Death, Of Course, Is A Refuge. It's Where You Go When A New Name, Or A Mask And Cape, Can No Longer Hide You From Yourself. It's Where You Run To When None Of The Principalities Of Your Conscience Will Grant You Asylum.

I Planned How I Would Kill Myself In The Time Of Churchill (stand Under Bombs), Victoria (throw Myself Under A Horse), And Henry The Eighth (marry Henry The Eighth)- Little Bee

If Your Face Is Swollen From The Severe Beatings Of Life, Smile And Pretend To Be A Fat Man.

Something I Am Now Convinced Of, After Researching Everyone Brave, Is That None Of Us Is Born Courageous In All Respects.

We Were Exiles From Reality That Summer. We Were Refugees From Ourselves.

I Think That The Relationship Between Two Top-level Athletes Who Are Rivals Is One Of The Most Fascinating Human Relationships To Explore. It's Always One Atom Away From Being A Tragedy.

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.

That Is How We Lived, Happily And Without Hope. I Was Very Young Then, And I Did Not Miss Having A Future Because I Did Not Know I Was Entitled To One.

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.

In A Few Breaths' Time I Will Speak Some Sad Words To You. But You Must Hear Them The Same Way We Have Agreed To See Scars Now. Sad Words Are Just Another Beauty.

Is It My Fault If I Do Not Look Like An English Girl And I Do Not Talk Like A Nigerian? Well, Who Says An English Girl Must Have Skin As Pale As The Clouds That Float Across Her Summers? Who Says A Nigerian Girl Must Speak In Fallen English...?

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.

A Scar Is Never Ugly. That Is What The Scar Makers Want Us To Think. A Scar Does Not Form On The Dying. A Scar Means, I Survived.

It Was The Month Of May And There Was Warm Sunshine Dripping Through The Holes Between The Clouds, Like The Sky Was A Broken Blue Bowl And A Child Was Trying To Keep Honey In It.

Life Is Extremely Short And You Cannot Dance To Current Affairs.

Current Affairs

Yet War Doesn't End With Armistice, It Only Ends With Forgiveness And Reconciliation.

We Cannot Choose Where To Start And Stop. Our Stories Are The Tellers Of Us.

Wouldn't That Be Funny, If The Oil Rebels Were Playing U2 In Their Jungle Camps, And The Government Soldiers Were Playing U2 In Their Trucks. I Think Everyone Was Killing Everyone Else And Listening To The Same Music... That Is A Good Trick About This World, Sarah. No One Likes Each Other, But Everyone Likes U2.

The Reason Why I Love People, And Writing About Them, Is Because They Don't Always Respond With Hate And Anger. If They Did I Wouldn't Have A Story To Tell. Who Wants To Know About Someone Who Was Brutalised And Became Brutal? I'm Interested In The Exceptions.

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.

On The Girl's Brown Legs There Were Many Small White Scars. I Was Thinking, Do Those Scars Cover The Whole Of You, Like The Stars And The Moons On Your Dress? 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 The Dying. A Scar Means, I Survived.

If I Can't Write It Would Be As If I Died.

Our Own Personal Brand Of Courage - In Relationships, In Conflict, In Our Principles - Is As Unique As Our Fingerprints.

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