Eden

“It was not the same as charging down a machine-gun nest armed only with a Bowie knife, or strapping in to the tail-gunner seat of a four-engined heavy bomber. And no one else would ever know, since one did not get a medal for letting go of a woman’s hand on a gray Saturday morning in the middle of a European war. But to have faith—that a lover would be constant and life clement—this did require courage in a city more disposed to beginnings than safe continuations. As”
― Chris Cleave, Everyone Brave is Forgiven

“In the history of the world there was not one example of a man ever having written a satisfactory letter to a woman who mattered to him.”
― Chris Cleave, Everyone Brave is Forgiven

“Why victims stay isn’t the question we need to be asking. Rather, I think a better question is: how do we protect this person? No qualifiers. No musing about why she stayed or what she might appear to be doing or not doing. Just one simple question: how do we protect her?”
― Rachel Louise Snyder, No Visible Bruises: What We Don’t Know About Domestic Violence Can Kill Us

“Oh, thought Tom, so it finishes as quickly as this. All the things we make exceptional are merely borrowed from the mundane and must without warning be surrendered to it.”
― Chris Cleave, Everyone Brave is Forgiven