It's very hard to articulate the things that are important about writing. — Tim O'Brien About Copy Share Image
“people who were so incredibly alive could get so incredibly dead.” — Tim O'Brien Incredibly Copy Share Image
“How crazy it was that people who were so incredibly alive could get so incredibly dead” — Tim O'Brien Night-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
“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
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
“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
“When your afraid, really afraid, you see things you never saw before, you pay attention to the world.” — Tim O'Brien Afraid Copy Share Image
What sticks to memory, often, are those odd little fragments that have no beginning and no end... — Tim O'Brien Ends 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
In the attic, a warhead no doubt burns. Everything is combustible. Faith burns. Trust burns. Everything burns to nothing and even nothing… — Tim O'Brien Attics 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
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
“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
“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
“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
The thing about a story is that you dream it as you tell it, hoping that others might then dream along with… — Tim O'Brien Dream 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
“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
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
“I detested their blind, thoughtless, automatic acquiescence to it all, their simpleminded patriotism, their prideful ignorance, their love-it-or-leave-it platitudes, how they were… — Tim O'Brien Honesty Copy Share Image
“I saw no unity of purpose, no consensus on matters of philosophy or history or law. The very facts were shrouded in… — Tim O'Brien Civil war Copy Share Image
“A true war story is never moral. It does not instruct, nor encourage virtue, nor suggest models of proper human behavior, nor… — Tim O'Brien Habits Copy Share Image
“He felt crazy sometimes. Real depravity. Late at night an electric sizzle came into his blood, a tight pumped-up killing rage, and… — Tim O'Brien 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 Telling Copy Share Image
“To generalize about war is like generalizing about peace. Almost everything is true. Almost nothing is true. At its core, perhaps, war… — Tim O'Brien Death Copy Share Image
