black
grey
blue
red
brown
white

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

Nobody has the time to sit down and explain the first world from first principles.
CHRIS CLEAVE

Down Nobody Principles World
WWII was, without exaggeration, the biggest event in all of human history, and it is still within living memory.
CHRIS CLEAVE

Events Memories Wwii
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
I’m not happy with just repeating myself.
CHRIS CLEAVE

Happy Just Not Repairing
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
Andrew had a gift for deepening the incision he began.
CHRIS CLEAVE

Andrew Began Inciosn People
If I can’t write it would be as if I died.
CHRIS CLEAVE

Chasing Destroy Died Writing
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

Girl Looks Stories
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
Yet war doesn’t end with armistice, it only ends with forgiveness and reconciliation.
CHRIS CLEAVE

Armistice Ends War
I’m a much better writer for being a father.
CHRIS CLEAVE

Being Better Father Much
The reason why I love people, and writing about them, is because they don’t always respond with hate and anger. If they did I wouldn’t have a story to tell. Who wants to know about someone who was brutalised and became brutal? I’m interested in the exceptions.
CHRIS CLEAVE

Anger Hate Writing
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
To be well in your mind you have first to be free.
CHRIS CLEAVE

Firsts Mind Wells
My paternal grandmother drove ambulances during the regional Blitz, in Birmingham.
CHRIS CLEAVE

Ambulance Birmingham Grandmother

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…?

Related Topics

Popular Authors

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…?

Related Topics

Popular Authors

More Chris Cleave Quotes