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We were exiles from reality that summer. We were refugees from ourselves.

Chris Cleave

I know that the hopes of this whole human world can fit inside one soul.
CHRIS CLEAVE

Fit Soul World
To be well in your mind you have first to be free.
CHRIS CLEAVE

Firsts Mind Wells
Yet war doesn’t end with armistice, it only ends with forgiveness and reconciliation.
CHRIS CLEAVE

Armistice Ends War
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.
CHRIS CLEAVE

Dating Grandmother Men
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.
CHRIS CLEAVE

Doctors Giving Pickles
This thing with being lovers, it isn’t like being married.
CHRIS CLEAVE

Being Lovers Married
[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.
CHRIS CLEAVE

Children Teacher War
Things that we have to really dare ourselves to do come quite naturally to others.
CHRIS CLEAVE

Dare Refuge Understand
If I could not smile, I think my situation would be even more serious.
CHRIS CLEAVE

Serious Smile Thinking
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.
CHRIS CLEAVE

Ears Grief Moving
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.
CHRIS CLEAVE

Stories Talking Writing
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.
CHRIS CLEAVE

Capes Names Running
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.
CHRIS CLEAVE

Alive Mean Stories
I’m really interested in people’s decisions.
CHRIS CLEAVE

Decision Interested People
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 a much better writer for being a father.
CHRIS CLEAVE

Being Better Father Much

We were exiles from reality that summer. We were refugees from ourselves.

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We were exiles from reality that summer. We were refugees from ourselves.

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Popular Authors

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