Laughter does not deny pain. Laughter - like a wail - acknowledges and replies to pain. — Tim O'Brien Copy Share Image
It's very hard to articulate the things that are important about writing. — Tim O'Brien Copy Share Image
When your afraid,reallyafraid, you see things you never saw before, you pay attention to the world. — Tim O'Brien Copy Share Image
“I learned that words make a difference. It's easier to cope with a kicked bucked than a corpse; if it isn't human,… — Tim O'Brien Copy Share Image
[Y]ou can tell a true war story by its absolute and uncompromising allegiance to obscenity and evil. — Tim O'Brien Absolutes Copy Share Image
“He'd been coiled like a snake for years and the tension had gone slack and when he was ready to spring the… — Tim O'Brien Experience Copy Share Image
“The bad stuff never stops happening: it lives in its own dimension, repaying itself over and over.” — Tim O'Brien Copy Share Image
He had an opinion of himself, I think, that was too high for his own good. Or maybe it was the reverse.… — Tim O'Brien Copy Share Image
A thing may happen and be a total lie; another thing may not happen and be truer than the truth. — Tim O'Brien Lying Copy Share Image
...his love was too much for him, he felt paralyzed, he wanted to sleep inside her lungs and breathe her blood and… — Tim O'Brien Copy Share Image
“CEASE FIRE,' Captain Johansen shouted. 'Cease fire, what's wrong with you guys? Stop wasting the goddamn ammo. CEASE FIRE!' Cease fire,' the… — Tim O'Brien Chain of command Copy Share Image
“Men killed, and died, because they were embarrassed not to. It was what had brought them to the war in the first… — Tim O'Brien Dreams Copy Share Image
“Looking back after twenty years, I sometimes wonder if the events of that summer didn’t happen in some other dimension, a place… — Tim O'Brien Life Copy Share Image
I'm skimming across the surface of my own history, moving fast, riding the melt beneath the blades, doing loops and spins, and… — Tim O'Brien Copy Share Image
“They carried their reputations. They carried the soldier’s greatest fear, which was the fear of blushing. Men killed, and died, because they… — Tim O'Brien Fear Copy Share Image
“The days seemed to stretch out toward infinity, blank and humid, without purpose, and at night I was kept awake by the… — Tim O'Brien Death Copy Share Image
“One morning in Saigon she'd asked what it was all about 'This whole war,' she said, 'why was everybody so mad at… — Tim O'Brien War Copy Share Image
“He showed me how...See, he says he's going up through Laos, then into Burma, and then some other country, I forget, and… — Tim O'Brien Laos Copy Share Image
“the act of writing had led me through a swirl of memories that might otherwise have ended in paralysis or worse. By… — Tim O'Brien Copy Share Image
“Anyways, the guys try to be cool. They just lie there and groove, but after a while they start hearing - you… — Tim O'Brien Chamber music Copy Share Image
“And sometimes remembering will lead to a story, which makes it forever. That's what stories are for. Stories are for joining the… — Tim O'Brien Memory Copy Share Image
“Because it's all relative. You're pinned down in some filthy hellhole of a paddy, getting your ass delivered to kingdom come, but… — Tim O'Brien Peace Copy Share Image
But the thing about remembering is that you don't forget. You take your material where you find it, which is in your… — Tim O'Brien Circles Copy Share Image
First Lieutenant Jimmy Cross carried letters from a girl named Martha, a junior at Mount Sebastian College in New Jersey. They were… — Tim O'Brien Copy Share Image
Mitchell Sanders was right. For the common soldier, at least, war has the feel-the spiritual texture-of a great ghostly fog, thick and… — Tim O'Brien Ambiguity Copy Share Image
“In battle, in a war, a soldier sees only a tiny fragment of what is available to be seen. The soldier is… — Tim O'Brien Battle Copy Share Image
“A hundred stories [...] Ghosts rising from the dead. Ghosts behind you and in front of you and inside you.” — Tim O'Brien Ghost Copy Share Image
“You can tell a true war story by its absolute and uncompromising allegiance to obscenity and evil.” — Tim O'Brien Peace Copy Share Image
“They would get their shit together, and keep it together, and maintain it neatly and in good working order.” — Tim O'Brien Funny Copy Share Image
“If you don’t care for obscenity, you don’t care for the truth; if you don’t care for the truth, watch how you… — Tim O'Brien Obscenity Copy Share Image
What sticks to memory, often, are those odd little fragments that have no beginning and no end... — Tim O'Brien Copy Share Image
“It had nothing to do with morality. Embarrassment, that’s all it was. And right then I submitted. I would go to the… — Tim O'Brien Embarrassed Copy Share Image
“Sometimes the bravest thing in the world was to sit through the night and feel the cold in your bones.” — Tim O'Brien Copy Share Image
Fiction, maybe art in general, is a tentative, uncertain enterprise; it's not science, it's an exploration, but you never find much in… — Tim O'Brien Copy Share Image
“Everywhere, it seemed, in the tress and water and sky, a great worldwide sadness came pressing down on me, a crushing sorrow,… — Tim O'Brien Grief Copy Share Image
I guess we're really brothers, aren't we? Don't know what that means, except it means that some of the same things we… — Tim O'Brien Brother Copy Share Image
Each of us, I suppose needs his illusions. Life after death. A maker of planets. A woman to love, a man to… — Tim O'Brien After death Copy Share Image
There is always the threat of tomorrow's treachery, or next year's treachery, or the treachery implicit in all the tomorrows beyond that. — Tim O'Brien Betrayal Copy Share Image
![“[Y]ou can tell a true war story by its absolute and uncompromising allegiance to obscenity and evil.” quote by Tim O'Brien](https://sms4smile.com/q/img-quotes/f9c/tim-o-brien-1818_absolutes_y-ou-can-tell-a-true-war-story-by-its-ab_1522644.png)
![“A hundred stories [...] Ghosts rising from the dead. Ghosts behind you and in front of you and inside you.” quote by Tim O'Brien](https://sms4smile.com/q/img-quotes/cfc/tim-o-brien-1818_ghost_a-hundred-stories-ghosts-rising-from-the_2992809.png)
