239 Quotes by Chris Cleave

But life is not inclined to let any of us escape.

All the things we make exceptional are merely borrowed from the mundane and must without warning be surrendered to it.

One time he showed me a picture of the band. It was the picture from the CD box. One of the musicians in the picture, he had a lot of hair. It was black with tight curls and it sat on the top of his head like a heavy weight and it went right down the back of his neck to his shoulders. I understand fashion in your language, but this hair did not look like fashion, I am telling you, it looked like a punishment.

You will laugh at me-silly village girl-for staring at an ice cube like this. You will laugh, but this was the first time I had seen water made solid. It was beautiful-because if this could be done, then perhaps it could be done to everything else that was always escaping and running away and vanishing into sand or mist.

The heart was a bicameral thing, both stoical and skittish. Who was to say that it mightn’t endure the years of separation and the abrupt reversals of fate, only to be repulsed by a misaligned vase, by a lipsticked tooth, by a hundredth of an ounce of ash?

And that is how it was, the first time I touched the soil of England as a free woman, it was not with the soles of my boots but with the seat of my trousers.

I do not think I have left my country. I think it has traveled with me.

Look, do you believe in the institution of marriage?” “Of course.” “And you accept that such beautiful lightning cannot strike you twice?” “Well yes, I suppose – ” “Then shouldn’t you get a ring on her as soon as possible?

Gloriously, I’ve also learned that people you meet in real life are very unrealistic. The marvelous problem for fiction is to capture this preposterous, implausible and blazingly eccentric life, and to put it in a cell overnight, to sober it up until it reads believably on the page. That’s what a novelist is: I’m not a creating god, I’m reality’s jailor.