War Quotes by Tim O'Brien

“They would repair the leaks in their eyes.”

— Tim O'Brien

Men killed, and died, because they were embarrassed not to.

— Tim O'Brien

A true war story is never moral.

— Tim O'Brien

I was a coward. I went to the war.

— Tim O'Brien

In any war story, but especially a true one, it's difficult to separate what happened from what seemed to happen.

— Tim O'Brien

[Y]ou can tell a true war story by its absolute and uncompromising allegiance to obscenity and evil.

— Tim O'Brien

Can the foot soldier teach anything important about war, merely for having been there? I think not. He can tell war stories.

— Tim O'Brien

“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

“You can tell a true war story by its absolute and uncompromising allegiance to obscenity and evil.”

— Tim O'Brien

I'll picture Rat Kiley face, his grief, and I'll think, You dumb cooze. Because she wasn't listening. It wasn't a war story.…

— Tim O'Brien

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

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

“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

If a story seems moral, do not believe it. If at the end of a war story you feel uplifted, or if…

— Tim O'Brien

“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

“There should be a law, I though. If you support a war, if you think it's worth the price, that's fine, but…

— Tim O'Brien

“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

“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

“I remember Mitchell Sanders sitting quietly in the shade of an old banyan tree. He was using a thumbnail to pry off…

— Tim O'Brien

“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

“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

“You learn, finally, that you'll die, and so you try to hang on to your own life, that gentle, naive kid you…

— Tim O'Brien

“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

“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

“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

“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

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

“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

“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

“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

“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

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

“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

“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

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

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

“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

“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

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