Chris Cleave, Everyone Brave Is Forgiven Quotes

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.

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

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

They spoke of small things at first, since it was best, when reattaching threads, to begin with the easiest knots.

People spoke in whispers, as if the war was listening

She knew, now, why her father had not spoken of the last war, nor Alistair of his. It was hardly fair on the living.

I suppose we ought to be getting home, in any case.”“Oh god, is it wartime already?”“Look on the bright side: it’ll be dinner when we get back.

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

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.

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

This helpful war. It makes us better people and then it tries to kill us.

You are a mousetrap of a friend, all soft cheese and hard springs

What is the good of influence if one can only use it on strangers?

The true moments of one's life were sadder for the fact that they must always be synchronized with the ordinary: with rail timetables, with breaks in traffic.

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