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'.

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.

With, or despite our scars, we stay alive.

All of us heal in time. The strongest are born again. We only keep the scars we choose to keep.

The beauty's in the scars.

Real pain hurts so bad. When you've gone through something and you've overcome it, you're able to heal other people.

Women shouldn't be burdened by what existed in their past, we should all learn how to turn pain into strength.

I don't regret the painful times; I bare my scars as if they were medals.

It takes strength to make your way through grief, to grab hold of life and let it pull you forward.

I look back at myself, this innocent person, and I think, 'Gosh, she's okay.' I handled a lot, and I'm still here.

No matter how far life pushes you down, no matter how much you hurt, you can always bounce back.

What happened to me in Somalia doesn't define me.

All this pain is going to come back and make me stronger.

I saw his scars - the visible ones-and saw how breaking him had not made him any less beautiful. If anything, he stood stronger, because he'd survived.

Most people carry that pain around inside them their whole lives, until they kill the pain by other means, or until it kills them. But you, my friends, you found another way: a way to use the pain. To burn it as fuel, for light and warmth. You have learned to break the world that has tried to break you.

And I saw darkness for weeks. It never dawned on me that I could come out of it, but you heal. Nature heals you, and you do come out of it. All of a sudden I saw a crack of light ... then all of a sudden I saw another crack of light. Then I saw forms in the light. And I recognized that there was no darkness, that in darkness there'll always be light.

A lot of my wounds have healed. They have left scars, and I can either hide my scars, put a long sleeve shirt on, and cover them up. Or, I can show them off and say, "Yeah, it happened."

I think it [my first heartbreak] probably just taught me that you will always heal. That this too shall pass. The first time you feel that sort of pain, you think it's never going to go away. Once you do survive it, you realize you can survive anything.

I survived this torture which left me paralyzed for years. That's what that night was all about, mutilation, more than violence through sex. I really do feel as though I was psychologically mutilated that night and now I'm trying to put the pieces back together again. Through love, not hatred. And through my music. My strength has been to open again, to life, and my victory is the fact that, despite it all, I kept alive my vulnerability.

my life has been saved over and over again by picking up a book in which someone captured the whole experience of being despised and not dying.

Contrary to what we may have been taught to think, unnecessary and unchosen suffering wounds us but need not scar us for life. It does mark us. What we allow the mark of our suffering to become is in our own hands.

....he said it was interesting. He used the word 'textured'. He said 'smooth' is boring but 'textured' was interesting, and the scar meant that I was stronger than whatever had tried to hurt me.

There are some pains that run too deep for anything to absolve them. The best we can do is pick up the pieces and hope for the strength we need to keep going.

Don't apologize for all the tears you've cried, you've been way too strong now for all your life.

The pain of yesterday is the strength of today.