{"author":"Chris Cleave","author_id":"Chris+Cleave","total_quotes":52,"quotes":[{"text":"We were exiles from reality that summer. We were refugees from ourselves.","author":"Chris Cleave","tags":["life","trauma"],"id":206,"author_id":"Chris+Cleave"},{"text":"A scar does not form on the dying. A scar means, I survived.","author":"Chris Cleave","tags":["survival"],"id":5475,"author_id":"Chris+Cleave"},{"text":"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.","author":"Chris Cleave","tags":["death"],"id":9854,"author_id":"Chris+Cleave"},{"text":"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.","author":"Chris Cleave","tags":["healing","scars"],"id":10686,"author_id":"Chris+Cleave"},{"text":"They spoke of small things at first, since it was best, when reattaching threads, to begin with the easiest knots.","author":"Chris Cleave","tags":["conversation","friendship","making-up"],"id":31102,"author_id":"Chris+Cleave"},{"text":"One could always imagine that one's life, though smoldering in parts, might be undamaged in the west.","author":"Chris Cleave","tags":["hope"],"id":36536,"author_id":"Chris+Cleave"},{"text":"I understand that your brain is large and perpetually at war with itself.","author":"Chris Cleave","tags":["anxiety","intelligent","overthinking"],"id":50631,"author_id":"Chris+Cleave"},{"text":"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. ","author":"Chris Cleave","tags":["storytelling"],"id":52984,"author_id":"Chris+Cleave"},{"text":"Her mother set to with the hairbrush again. “But would that be so awful, darling? To be the prettiest thing in Brimscombe-and-Thrupp?”“I should rather die.”“You nearly did.”“Yes, but I tend to blame the Germans.","author":"Chris Cleave","tags":["feminism-society","humour","war","world-war-two"],"id":59151,"author_id":"Chris+Cleave"},{"text":"Mary leaned back, exhaled, and watched her smoke rise. 'What sort of man do you want anyway?''Tall. Funny. Never came top of his class or pulled the wings off bees.'Yes, but I mean really? When all of this is over, and assuming we win -' ...Hilda snorted. '(I) just want a tall man and a stiff drink. You could even swap the adjectives.","author":"Chris Cleave","tags":["humorous"],"id":59564,"author_id":"Chris+Cleave"}],"pagination":{"page":1,"page_size":10,"total":52,"pages":6,"next":"?page=2\u0026page_size=10"}}