I’m a much better writer for being a father.
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
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There’s what people say, and there’s what people mean, and I like to explore the difference between the two.
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I know that the hopes of this whole human world can fit inside one soul.
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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.
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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.
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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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[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.
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To be well in your mind you have first to be free.
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If I could not smile, I think my situation would be even more serious.
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Yet war doesn’t end with armistice, it only ends with forgiveness and reconciliation.
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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.
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And thus love makes fools of us all.
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I think, in common with a lot of novelists, I wasn’t the most athletic guy at school.
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I think bravery means a different thing to everyone.
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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.
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Nobody has the time to sit down and explain the first world from first principles.
CHRIS CLEAVE