“If you don’t care for obscenity, you don’t care for the truth; if you don’t care for the truth, watch how you… — Tim O'Brien Obscenity Copy Share Image
“Everywhere, it seemed, in the tress and water and sky, a great worldwide sadness came pressing down on me, a crushing sorrow,… — Tim O'Brien Grief Copy Share Image
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 Believe Copy Share Image
“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 War Copy Share Image
“Oh, man, you fuckin' trashed the fucker," Azar said. " You scrambled his sorry self, look at that, you did, you laid… — 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 Courage 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
“Do we choose sleep? Hell no and bullshit - we fall. We give ourselves over to possibility, to whim and fancy, to… — Tim O'Brien Possibility Copy Share Image
It's not just the embarrassment of tears. That's part of it, no doubt, but what embarrasses me much more, and always will,… — Tim O'Brien Dignity Copy Share Image
“A hundred stories [...] Ghosts rising from the dead. Ghosts behind you and in front of you and inside you.” — Tim O'Brien Copy Share Image
“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 Death Copy Share Image
And as a writer now, I want to save Linda's life. Not her body--her life. — Tim O'Brien Body Copy Share Image
A place where your life exists before you live it, and where it goes afterwards. — Tim O'Brien Life 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
“They were signed Love, Martha, but Lieutenant Cross understood that Love was only a way of signing and did not mean what… — Tim O'Brien Love Copy Share Image
“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 Death 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
“Garden of Evil. Over here, man, every sin’s real fresh and original.” — 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. — Tim O'Brien Difficult Copy Share Image
“The object of storytelling, like the object of magic, is not to explain or to resolve, but rather to create and to… — Tim O'Brien Creativity Copy Share Image
“They would get their shit together, and keep it together, and maintain it neatly and in good working order.” — Tim O'Brien Funny Copy Share Image
But in a story, which is a kind of dreaming, the dead sometimes smile and sit up and return to the world. — Tim O'Brien Dream 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
