Nobody has the time to sit down and explain the first world from first principles.
CHRIS CLEAVEEven 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.
More Chris Cleave Quotes
-
-
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 -
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 -
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 -
My paternal grandmother drove ambulances during the regional Blitz, in Birmingham.
CHRIS CLEAVE -
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 -
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 -
This thing with being lovers, it isn’t like being married.
CHRIS CLEAVE -
I think bravery means a different thing to everyone.
CHRIS CLEAVE -
WWII was, without exaggeration, the biggest event in all of human history, and it is still within living memory.
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 -
I’m a much better writer for being a father.
CHRIS CLEAVE -
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 -
A scar does not form on the dying. A scar means, I survived.
CHRIS CLEAVE -
And thus love makes fools of us all.
CHRIS CLEAVE -
Sad words are just another beauty. A sad story means, this storyteller is alive
CHRIS CLEAVE