The presence of danger has a way of making you feel fully awake. — Tim O'Brien Awake Copy Share Image
A place where your life exists before you live it, and where it goes afterwards. — Tim O'Brien Exists Copy Share Image
Writing doesn’t get easier with experience. The more you know, the harder it is to write. — Tim O'Brien Easier Copy Share Image
I live in my head all day long and the world is a little dreamy. — Tim O'Brien All day 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 Safe Copy Share Image
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 Feet Copy Share Image
I want you to feel what I felt. I want you to know why story-truth is truer sometimes than happening-truth. — Tim O'Brien Feels Copy Share Image
“Her white skin and those dark brown eyes and the way she always smiled at the world - always, it seemed -… — Tim O'Brien Brown eyes Copy Share Image
Even then, at nine years old, I wanted to live inside her body. I wanted to melt into her bones - THAT… — Tim O'Brien Body Copy Share Image
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 Dumb Copy Share Image
There was the single abiding certainty that they would never be at a loss for things to carry. — Tim O'Brien Abiding Copy Share Image
“She'd say amazing things sometimes. "Once you're alive," she'd say, "you cant ever be dead.” — Tim O'Brien Amazing things Copy Share Image
I did not set out to write another novel. One day I sat down with the thought of trying my hand at… — Tim O'Brien Another 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 Care Copy Share Image
A giddy feeling, in a way, except there was the dreamy edge of impossibility to it - like running a dead-end maze… — Tim O'Brien Conclusion 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 Causes Copy Share Image
...you find yourself studying the fine colors on the river, you feel wonder and awe at the setting of the sun, and… — Tim O'Brien Aching 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 Aesthetic Copy Share Image
“Well, right now I'm not dead. But when I am, it's like...I don't know, I guess it's like being inside a book… — Tim O'Brien Book Copy Share Image
You don't know. When I'm out there at night I feel close to my own body, I can feel my blood moving,… — Tim O'Brien Blood Copy Share Image
“Why do we care about Lizzie Borden, or Judge Crater, or Lee Harvey Oswald, or the Little Big Horn? Mystery! Because of… — Tim O'Brien Doubt 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… — Tim O'Brien Courage 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 Blame Copy Share Image
Linda was nine then, as I was, but we were in love...it had all the shadings and complexities of mature adult love… — Tim O'Brien Adults Copy Share Image
“It was a brisk, polite town. It did not know shit about shit, and did not care to know. Norman Bowker leaned… — Tim O'Brien Smell 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 Alternatives 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 Books Copy Share Image
“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 History Copy Share Image
“I’m not dead. But when I am, it’s like . . . I don’t know, I guess it’s like being inside a… — Tim O'Brien Book Copy Share Image
...precisely where the land touched water at high tide, where things came together but also separated. — Tim O'Brien Land Copy Share Image
My life is storytelling. I believe in stories, in their incredible power to keep people alive, to keep the living alive, and… — Tim O'Brien Alive Copy Share Image
“All around me the options seemed to be narrowing, as if I were hurtling down a huge black funnel, the whole world… — Tim O'Brien Whole world Copy Share Image
That's what fiction is for. It's for getting at the truth when the truth isn't sufficient for the truth. — Tim O'Brien Fiction Copy Share Image
They carried all they could bear, and then some, including a silent awe for the terrible power of the things they carried. — Tim O'Brien Awe Copy Share Image
It's a hard thing to explain to somebody who hasn't felt it, but the presence of death and danger has a way… — Tim O'Brien Awake Copy Share Image
... when he kissed her, she received the kiss without returning it, her eyes wide open, not afraid, not a virgin's eyes,… — Tim O'Brien Detachment Copy Share Image
“Stories are for eternity, when memory is erased, when there is nothing to remember except the story.” — Tim O'Brien Eternity 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… — Tim O'Brien Bad time Copy Share Image
In any war story, but especially a true one, it's difficult to separate what happened from what seemed to happen. — Tim O'Brien Difficult Copy Share Image
“I have tried, of course, to be faithful to the evidence. Yet evidence is not truth. It is only evident.” — Tim O'Brien Faithful Copy Share Image
![“Well, right now I'm not dead. But when I am, it's like...I don't know, I guess it's like being inside a book that nobody's reading. [...] An old one. It's up on a library shelf, so you're safe and everything, but the book hasn't been checked out for a long, long time. All you can do is wait. Just…” quote by Tim O'Brien](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/img-quotes/abb/tim-o-brien-1818_book_well-right-now-i-m-not-dead-but-when-i-a_911144.jpg)
