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I am a woman built upon the wreckage of myself.

Chris Cleave

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

Behalf Books Movies
[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
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
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
Andrew had a gift for deepening the incision he began.
CHRIS CLEAVE

Andrew Began Inciosn People
Horror in your country is something you take a dose of to remind yourself that you are not suffering from it.
CHRIS CLEAVE

Country Horror Suffering
My paternal grandmother drove ambulances during the regional Blitz, in Birmingham.
CHRIS CLEAVE

Ambulance Birmingham Grandmother
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
Sad words are just another beauty. A sad story means, this storyteller is alive
CHRIS CLEAVE

Alive Mean Stories
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
Things that we have to really dare ourselves to do come quite naturally to others.
CHRIS CLEAVE

Dare Refuge Understand
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
I’m not happy with just repeating myself.
CHRIS CLEAVE

Happy Just Not Repairing
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
We no longer need to show people being brave: instead, we can examine how they became brave. We can assume that they didn’t start out that way. If we allow that they started out just like us, then their journey into courage becomes both more fascinating and more impressive.
CHRIS CLEAVE

Brave Journey People

I am a woman built upon the wreckage of myself.

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I am a woman built upon the wreckage of myself.

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