It was very sad, he thought. The things men carried inside. The things men did or felt they had to do. — Tim O'Brien Men Copy Share Image
“And now it is time for a final act of courage. I urge you: March proudly into your own dream.” — Tim O'Brien Courage Copy Share Image
“They were signed Love, Martha, but Lieutenant Cross understood that Love was only a way of signing and did not mean what… — Tim O'Brien Love Copy Share Image
“My whole life seemed to spill out into the river, swirling away from me, everything I had ever been or ever wanted… — Tim O'Brien Life Copy Share Image
“Money was never a problem, passports were never required. There were always new places to dance.” — Tim O'Brien Dance Copy Share Image
But in a story, which is a kind of dreaming, the dead sometimes smile and sit up and return to the world. — Tim O'Brien Dream Copy Share Image
“When your afraid, really afraid, you see things you never saw before, you pay attention to the world.” — Tim O'Brien Copy Share Image
“He wanted to heat up the truth, to make it burn so hot that you would feel exactly what he felt. For… — Tim O'Brien Truth Copy Share Image
“The object of storytelling, like the object of magic, is not to explain or to resolve, but rather to create and to… — Tim O'Brien Creativity Copy Share Image
“Oh, man, you fuckin' trashed the fucker," Azar said. " You scrambled his sorry self, look at that, you did, you laid… — Tim O'Brien Copy Share Image
“He believed in mission. But . . . he did not believe in it as an intellectual imperative, or even as a… — Tim O'Brien Goals Copy Share Image
“A few names were known in full, some in part, some not at all. No one cared. Except in clearly unreasonable cases,… — Tim O'Brien Copy Share Image
“Is there sound, he wondered, without reception? Do you hear the shot that gets you? How big, in fact, was the Big… — Tim O'Brien Big bang Copy Share Image
“War is hell, but that's not the half of it, because war is also mystery and terror and adventure and courage and… — Tim O'Brien Adventure Copy Share Image
“Courage was not always a matter of yes or no. Sometimes it came in degrees, like the cold; sometimes you were very… — Tim O'Brien Brave Copy Share Image
“What stories can do, I guess, is make things present. I can look at things I never looked at. I can attach… — Tim O'Brien Fiction Copy Share Image
“I would wish this book could take the form of a plea for everlasting peace, a plea from one who knows... Or… — Tim O'Brien Books Copy Share Image
Even now, as I write this, I can still feel that tightness. And I want you to feel it--the wind coming off… — Tim O'Brien Copy Share Image
“On occasions the war was like a Ping-Pong ball. You could put fancy spin on it, you could make it dance.” — Tim O'Brien Peace Copy Share Image
He wished he could've explained some of this. How he had been braver than he ever thought possible, but how he had… — Tim O'Brien Brave Copy Share Image
They carried the sky. The whole atmosphere, they carried it, the humidity, the monsoons, the stink of fungus and decay, all of… — Tim O'Brien Copy Share Image
“He killed me at the Scrabble board, barely concentrating, and on those occasions when speech was necessary he had a way of… — Tim O'Brien Communication Copy Share Image
“But truly it was not the money that mattered. It was the distant glitter of everything that was possible in the world,… — Tim O'Brien Drama Copy Share Image
“In many ways he was like America itself, big and strong, full of good intentions, a roll of fat jiggling at his… — Tim O'Brien America Copy Share Image
“Do we choose sleep? Hell no and bullshit - we fall. We give ourselves over to possibility, to whim and fancy, to… — Tim O'Brien Copy Share Image
“There is no rectitude whatsoever. There is no virtue. As a first rule of thumb, therefore, you can tell a true war… — Tim O'Brien Peace Copy Share Image
Stories are for joining the past to the future. Stories are for those late hours in the night when you can't remember… — Tim O'Brien Eternity Copy Share Image
The goal, I suppose, any fiction writer has, no matter what your subject, is to hit the human heart and the tear… — Tim O'Brien Copy Share Image
For Rat Kiley, I think, facts were formed by sensation, not the other way around, and when you listened to one of… — Tim O'Brien Facts Copy Share Image
What would you do? Would you jump? Would you feel pity for yourself? Would you think about your family and your childhood… — Tim O'Brien Copy Share Image
“It was a flight, a kind of fleeing, a kind of falling, falling higher and higher, spinning off the edge of the… — Tim O'Brien Author Copy Share Image
“Mitchell sanders was sitting under a banyan tree and using a thumbnail to pry off all the body lice, working slowly, carefully… — Tim O'Brien Copy Share Image
“I suppose if we gain anything from this unsought experience it will be an appreciation for honesty- frankness on the part of… — Tim O'Brien Gratitude Copy Share Image
“In the next days it took little provocation for us to flick the flint of our Zippo lighters. Thatched roofs take the… — Tim O'Brien Bad day Copy Share Image
Together we understood what terror was: you're not human anymore. You're a shadow. You slip out of your own skin, like molting,… — Tim O'Brien Copy Share Image
They carried all the emotional baggage of men who might die. Grief, terror, love, longing--these were intangibles, but the intangibles had their… — Tim O'Brien Baggage Copy Share Image
You can tell a true war story by the questions you ask. Somebody tells a story, let's say, and afterward you ask,… — Tim O'Brien Copy Share Image
And in the end, of course, a true war story is never about war. It's about sunlight. It's about the special way… — Tim O'Brien Copy Share Image
“Though it's odd, you're never more alive than when you're almost dead. You recognize what's valuable. Freshly, as if for the first… — Tim O'Brien Alive Copy Share Image
("I love you," someone says, and instantly we begin to wonder - "Well, how much?" - and when the answer comes -… — Tim O'Brien Copy Share Image
