Chris Cleave > Quotes

“We must see all scars as beauty. Okay? This will be our secret. Because take it from me, a scar does not form on the dying. A scar means, 'I survived'.”
― Chris Cleave, The Other Hand

“On the girl's brown legs there were many small white scars. I was thinking, Do those scars cover the whole of you, like the stars and the moons on your dress? I thought that would be pretty too, and I ask you right here please to agree with me that a scar is never ugly. That is what the scar makers want us to think. But you and I, we must make an agreement to defy them. We must see all scars as beauty. Okay? This will be our secret. Because take it from me, a scar does not form on the dying. A scar means, I survived.”
― Chris Cleave, Little Bee

“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, Little Bee

“Sad words are just another beauty. A sad story means, this storyteller is alive. The next thing you know something fine will happen to her, something marvelous, and then she will turn around and smile.”
― Chris Cleave, Little Bee

“and I ask you right here please to agree with me that a scar is never ugly. That is what the scar makers want us to think. But you and I, we must make an agreement to defy them. We must see all scars as beauty. Okay? This will be our secret. Because take it from me, a scar does not form on the dying. A scar means I survived. z”
― Chris Cleave, Little Bee

“To be well in your mind you have first to be free.”
― Chris Cleave, Little Bee

“It was the month of May and there was warm sunshine dripping through the holes between the clouds, like the sky was a broken blue bowl and a child was trying to keep honey in it.”
― Chris Cleave, Little Bee

“Wouldn't that be funny, if the oil rebels were playing U2 in their jungle camps, and the government soldiers were playing U2 in their trucks. I think everyone was killing everyone else and listening to the same music... That is a good trick about this world, Sarah. No one likes each other, but everyone likes U2.”
― Chris Cleave, Little Bee

“Life is extremely short and you cannot dance to current affairs.”
― Chris Cleave, Little Bee

“However long the moon disappears, someday it must shine again.”
― Chris Cleave, The Other Hand

“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, Little Bee

“I’m telling you, trouble is like the ocean. It covers two thirds of the world.”
― Chris Cleave, Little Bee

“A scar does not form on the dying. A scar means, I survived.”
― Chris Cleave, Little Bee

“I know that the hopes of this whole human world can fit inside one soul.”
― Chris Cleave, Little Bee

“If I could not smile, I think my situation would be even more serious.”
― Chris Cleave, Little Bee

“We were exiles from reality that summer. We were refugees from ourselves.”
― Chris Cleave, Little Bee

“You travel here and you travel there, trying to get out from under the cloud, and nothing works, and then one day you realize you've been carrying the weather around with you.”
― Chris Cleave, Little Bee

“Horror in your country is something you take a dose of to remind yourself that you are not suffering from it.”
― Chris Cleave, Little Bee

“Isn't it sad, growing up? You start off like my Charlie. You start off thinking you can kill all the baddier and save the world. Then you get a little bit older, maybe Little Bee's age, and you realize that some of the world's badness is inside you, that maybe you're a part of it. And then you get a bit older still, and a bit more comfortable, and you start wondering whether that badness you've seen in yourself is really all that bad at all. You start talking about ten per cent."

Maybe that's just developing as a person, Sarah."

I sighed and looked out at Little Bee

Well," I said, "maybe this is a developing world.”
― Chris Cleave, The Other Hand

“This is the forked tongue of grief again. It whispers in one ear: return to what you once loved best, and in the other ear it whispers, move on.”
― Chris Cleave, Little Bee

“On our honeymoon we talked and talked. We stayed in a beachfront villa, and we drank rum and lemonade and talked so much that I never even noticed what color the sea was. Whenever I need to stop and remind myself how much I once loved Andrew, I only need to think about this. That the ocean covers seven tenths of the earth's surface, and yet my husband could make me not notice it.”
― Chris Cleave, Little Bee

“That is the trouble with happiness-all of it is built on top of something that men want.”
― Chris Cleave, Little Bee

“They say that in the hour before an earthquake the clouds hang leaden in the sky, the winds slows to a hot breath, and the birds fall quiet in the trees of the town square. Yes but these are the same portents that precede lunchtime, frankly.”
― Chris Cleave, Little Bee

“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, Little Bee

“I am a woman built upon the wreckage of myself.”
― Chris Cleave, Incendiary

“What is an adventure? That depends on where you are starting from. Little girls in your country, they hide in the gap between the washing machine and the refrigerator and they make believe they are in the jungle, with green snakes and monkeys all around them. Me and my sister, we used to hide in a gap in the jungle, with green snakes and monkeys all around us, and make believe that we had a washing machine and a refrigerator. You live in a world of machines and you dream off things with beating hearts. We dream of machines, because we see where beating hearts have left us.”
― Chris Cleave

“We must see all scars as beauty. Okay? This will be our secret. Because take it from me, a scar does not form on the dying. A scar means, I survived. - Little Bee”
― Chris Cleave, Little Bee

“I was carrying two cargoes. Yes, one of them was horror, but the other one was hope.”
― Chris Cleave, Little Bee

“We must see all scars as beauty. Okay? This will be our secret. Because take it from me,a scar does not form on the dying. A scar means, I survived.”
― Chris Cleave

“In a few breaths' time I will speak some sad words to you. But you must hear them the same way we have agreed to see scars now. Sad words are just another beauty..... ”
― Chris Cleave

“And thus love makes fools of us all.”
― Chris Cleave, Little Bee

“I ask you right here to agree with me that a scar is never ugly. That is what scar makers want us to think. But you and I, we must see all scars as beauty... because take it from me, a scar does not form on the dying. A scar means, I survived.
Sad words are just another beauty. A sad story means, this story teller is alive. The next think you know, something fine will happen to her, something marvelous, and then she will turn around and smile.”
― Chris Cleave, Little Bee

“On the girl’s brown legs there were many small white scars. I was thinking, Do those scars cover the whole of you, like the stars and moons on your dress? I thought that would be pretty too, and I ask you right here please to agree with me that a scar is never ugly. That is what the scar makers want us to think. But you and I, we must make an agreement to defy them. We must see all scars a s beauty. Okay? This will be our secret. Because take it from me, a scar does not form on the dying. A scar means, ‘I survived’.

In a few breaths’ time I will speak some sad words to you. But you must hear them as we have agreed to see scars now. Sad words are just another beauty. A sad story means the storyteller is alive. The next thing you know, something fine will happen to her, something marvellous, and then she will turn round and smile.”
― Chris Cleave, Little Bee

“At some point you just have to turn around and face your life head on.”
― Chris Cleave, Little Bee

“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, Little Bee

“We cannot choose where to start and stop. Our stories are the tellers of us.”
― Chris Cleave, Little Bee

“It was hard not to be full of hope”
― Chris Cleave, Little Bee

“There was no quick grief for Andrew because he had been so slowly lost. First from my heart, then from my mind, and only finally from my life.”
― Chris Cleave, Little Bee

“Nobody has the time to sit down and explain the first world from first principles.”
― Chris Cleave, Little Bee

“your culture has become sophisticated, like a computer, or a drug that you take for a headache. You can use it, but you cannot explain how it works. Certainly not to girls who stack up their firewood against the side of the house. ”
― Chris Cleave

“If your face is swollen from the severe beatings of life, smile and pretend to be a fat man.”
― Chris Cleave

“So when I say that I am a refugee, you must understand that there is no refuge.”
― 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, Little Bee

“People wonder how they are ever going to change their lives, but really it is frighteningly easy.”
― Chris Cleave, Little Bee

“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, Little Bee

“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, Little Bee

“I smiled down at Charlie, and I understood that he would be free now even if I would not. In this way the life that was in me would find its way in him now. It was not a sad feeling. I felt my heart take off lightly like a butterfly and I thought, yes, this is it, something has survived in me, something that does not need to run anymore, because it is worth more than all the money in the world and its currency, its true home, is the living. And not just the living in this particular country or in that particular country, but the secret, irresistible heart of the living. I smiled back at Charlie and I knew that the hopes of this whole human world could fit inside one soul.”
― Chris Cleave, Little Bee

“In my world death will come chasing. In your world it will start whispering in your ear to destroy yourself. I know this because it started whispering to me when I was in the detention center.”
― Chris Cleave, Little Bee

“Once when we stopped to rest, she dug her toes into the earth at the edge of a field and smiled. When I saw her smile, I felt strong enough to carry on..”
― Chris Cleave, Little Bee

“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, Little Bee