The Clothes on Their Backs Quotes

“But who can really remember pain? It's impossible, you don't remember it, you only fear it returning. These thoughts are like stitches - you see together a memory with them and the flesh heals over into a scar. The scar is the memory.”
― Linda Grant, The Clothes on Their Backs

“You think your parents are there just to love and irritate you. You see them as satellites spinning round your sun and you try to run away across the universe while they chase you.”
― Linda Grant, The Clothes on Their Backs

“It is very strange to realise that when you see those old films on television of the toothbrush moustache dictator ranting and the mass rallies, and the stiff-armed salutes and all the marching up and down, and the well-known flag standing to attention, that famous menace and what it would lead to - all of it was happening while people went on buying shoes and handbags and party dresses and gramophone records and ornaments and choosing a new car or a new wireless set, or just sitting in a café eating cream cakes.”
― Linda Grant, The Clothes on Their Backs

“War was terrible and terrifying - blood, death, torture, blitz, camps. But if you watched the films they made, The Great Escape, The Bridge on the River Kwai, it seemed it was possible for war to be a chance for heroism and medal winning.”
― Linda Grant, The Clothes on Their Backs