“Yes, the issue was courage. It always had been, even as a kid. Things scared him. He couldn't help it. Noise scared… — Tim O'Brien Copy Share Image
“All of us, I suppose, like to believe that in a moral emergency we will behave like the heroes of our youth,… — Tim O'Brien Copy Share Image
“Still there was so much to say. How the rain never stopped. How the cold worked into your bones. Sometimes the bravest… — Tim O'Brien 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 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 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 Copy Share Image
They did not submit to the obvious alternative, which was simply to close the eyes and fall. So easy, really. Go limp… — Tim O'Brien Copy Share Image
“Yes, the issue was courage. It always had been, even as a kid. Things scared him. He couldn't help it. Noise scared him, dark… — 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
The thing about a story is that you dream it as you tell it, hoping that others might then dream along with you, and… — 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 the way… — 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, it doesn't… — Tim O'Brien Copy Share Image
“Stories are for eternity, when memory is erased, when there is nothing to remember except the story.” — Tim O'Brien Copy Share Image
“The story' Sanders would say "the whole tone, man, you're wrecking it." Tone?' The sound. You need to get a consitent sound, like slow… — 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 Copy Share Image
“They were afraid of dying, but they were even more afraid to show it.” — Tim O'Brien Copy Share Image
“Forty-three years old, and the war occurred half a lifetime ago, and yet the remembering makes it now. And sometimes remembering will lead to… — Tim O'Brien Copy Share Image
“He thought about the difference between good times and bad times, and how funny it was that he could not state the difference, only… — Tim O'Brien Copy Share Image
A lie, sometimes, can be truer than the truth, which is why fiction gets written. — Tim O'Brien Copy Share Image
