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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

Chris Cleave

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…?
CHRIS CLEAVE

Clouds Girl Summer
I am a woman built upon the wreckage of myself.
CHRIS CLEAVE

Built Woman Wreckage
I’m not happy with just repeating myself.
CHRIS CLEAVE

Happy Just Not Repairing
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.
CHRIS CLEAVE

Cry Pity Understood
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.
CHRIS CLEAVE

Bad Day Giving Lazy
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 Veteran Weight
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.
CHRIS CLEAVE

Character Research Writing
We were exiles from reality that summer. We were refugees from ourselves.
CHRIS CLEAVE

Reality Refugee Summer
We leave it up to books and movies to talk about WWII on our behalf.
CHRIS CLEAVE

Behalf Books Movies
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.
CHRIS CLEAVE

Girl Looks Stories
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
CHRIS CLEAVE

Bombs Horse Littles
I think bravery means a different thing to everyone.
CHRIS CLEAVE

Bravery Mean Thinking
To be well in your mind you have first to be free.
CHRIS CLEAVE

Firsts Mind Wells
A scar does not form on the dying. A scar means, I survived.
CHRIS CLEAVE

Dying Mean Scar
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.
CHRIS CLEAVE

Generations Golden Thinking
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

Enemy War Writing

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

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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

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