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A scar is never ugly. That is what the scar makers want us to think. A scar does not form on the dying. A scar means, I survived.

Chris Cleave

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
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
At this point in time the war [ WWII] is close enough to still feel hotly personal to a writer, yet far enough away so that jingoism and heroics are no longer required.
CHRIS CLEAVE

Enough Jingoism War
WWII was, without exaggeration, the biggest event in all of human history, and it is still within living memory.
CHRIS CLEAVE

Events Memories Wwii
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
A scar is never ugly. That is what the scar makers want us to think. A scar does not form on the dying. A scar means, I survived.
CHRIS CLEAVE

Dying Mean Thinking
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
I think bravery means a different thing to everyone.
CHRIS CLEAVE

Bravery Mean Thinking
If I could not smile, I think my situation would be even more serious.
CHRIS CLEAVE

Serious Smile Thinking
There’s what people say, and there’s what people mean, and I like to explore the difference between the two.
CHRIS CLEAVE

Differences Mean Two
That is how we lived, happily and without hope. I was very young then, and I did not miss having a future because I did not know I was entitled to one.
CHRIS CLEAVE

Hope Missing Without Young
I know that the hopes of this whole human world can fit inside one soul.
CHRIS CLEAVE

Fit Soul World
Yet war doesn’t end with armistice, it only ends with forgiveness and reconciliation.
CHRIS CLEAVE

Armistice Ends War
I’m not happy with just repeating myself.
CHRIS CLEAVE

Happy Just Not Repairing
I think, in common with a lot of novelists, I wasn’t the most athletic guy at school.
CHRIS CLEAVE

Guy School Thinking
If I can’t write it would be as if I died.
CHRIS CLEAVE

Chasing Destroy Died Writing

A scar is never ugly. That is what the scar makers want us to think. A scar does not form on the dying. A scar means, I survived.

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A scar is never ugly. That is what the scar makers want us to think. A scar does not form on the dying. A scar means, I survived.

Related Topics

Popular Authors

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