“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
“Forty-three years old, and the war occurred half a lifetime ago, and yet the remembering makes it now. And sometimes remembering will… — Tim O'Brien 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 Copy Share Image
It was my view then, and still is, that you don't make war without knowing why. Knowledge of course, is always imperfect,… — Tim O'Brien 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 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 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 Copy Share Image
“It can be argued, for instance, that war is grotesque. But in truth war is also beauty... Like a killer forest fire,… — 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 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 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 Copy Share Image
“when a nation goes to war it must have reasonable confidence in the justice and imperative of its cause. You can't fix… — Tim O'Brien Copy Share Image
In war you lose your sense of the definite, hence your sense of truth itself, and therefore it's safe to say that… — Tim O'Brien Copy Share Image
you can tell a true war story if it embarrasses you. If you don't care for obscenity, you don't care for the… — 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 Copy Share Image
In any war story, but especially a true one, it's difficult to separate what happened from what seemed to happen. What seems… — Tim O'Brien 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 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
“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
“When a man died, there had to be blame. Jimmy Cross understood this. You could blame the war, You could blame the… — Tim O'Brien Copy Share Image
“The town could not talk, and would not listen. "How'd you like to hear about the war?" he might have asked, but… — 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
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