Tim O'Brien Quotes - Page 3

Quotes about:

• The presence of danger has a way of making you feel fully awake.

  Tim O'Brien

  Way, Danger, Awake

  4 Copy quote

• Even now, as I write this, I can still feel that tightness. And I want you to feel it--the wind coming off the river, the waves, the silence, the wooded frontier. You're at the bow of a boat on the Rainy River. You're twenty-one years old, you're scared, and there's a hard squeezing pressure in your chest. What would you do? Would you jump? Would you feel pity for yourself? Would you think about your family and your childhood and your dreams and all you're leaving behind? Would it hurt? Would it feel like dying? Would you cry, as I did?

  Tim O'Brien

  Dream, Hurt, Writing

  Tim O'Brien (2009). “The Things They Carried”, p.54, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

  4 Copy quote

• I'm skimming across the surface of my own history, moving fast, riding the melt beneath the blades, doing loops and spins, and when I take a high leap into the dark and come down thirty years later, I realize it is as Tim trying to save Timmy's life with a story.

  Tim O'Brien

  Moving, Dark, Years

  Tim O'Brien (2009). “The Things They Carried”, p.233, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

  7 Copy quote

• There is always the threat of tomorrow's treachery, or next year's treachery, or the treachery implicit in all the tomorrows beyond that.

  Tim O'Brien

  Years, Next Year, Tomorrow

  Tim O'Brien (2006). “In the Lake of the Woods”, p.52, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

  5 Copy quote

• But the thing about remembering is that you don't forget.

  Tim O'Brien

  Rotary, Remember, Forget

  Tim O'Brien (2009). “The Things They Carried”, p.33, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

  52 Copy quote

• you're never more alive than when you're almost dead.

  Tim O'Brien

  Alive

  Tim O'Brien (2009). “The Things They Carried”, p.78, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

  5 Copy quote

• ("I love you," someone says, and instantly we begin to wonder - "Well, how much?" - and when the answer comes - "With my whole heart" - we then wonder about the wholeness of a fickle heart.) Our lovers, our husbands, our wives, our fathers, our gods - they are all beyond us.

  Tim O'Brien

  Husband, Father, Love You

  Tim O'Brien (2006). “In the Lake of the Woods”, p.110, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

  4 Copy quote

• 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

  War, Thinking, Feet

  Tim O'Brien (2011). “If I Die in a Combat Zone: Box Me Up and Ship Me Home”, p.23, Broadway Books

  4 Copy quote

• I was a coward. I went to the war.

  Tim O'Brien

  War, Coward, Rainy

  Tim O'Brien (2009). “The Things They Carried”, p.58, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

  6 Copy quote

• A true war story is never moral.

  Tim O'Brien

  War, War Stories, Stories

  Tim O'Brien (2009). “The Things They Carried”, p.65, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

  4 Copy quote

• They carried the sky. The whole atmosphere, they carried it, the humidity, the monsoons, the stink of fungus and decay, all of it, they carried gravity.

  Tim O'Brien

  Sky, Atmosphere, Decay

  Tim O'Brien (2009). “The Things They Carried”, p.14, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

  14 Copy quote

• We are fascinated, all of us, by the implacable otherness of others. And we wish to penetrate by hypothesis, by daydream, by scientific investigation those leaden walls that encase the human spirit, that define it and guard it and hold it forever inaccessible.

  Tim O'Brien

  Wall, Forever, Wish

  Tim O'Brien (2006). “In the Lake of the Woods”, p.110, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

  12 Copy quote

• 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 hope somebody'll pick it up and start reading.

  Tim O'Brien

  Book, Reading, Long

  Tim O'Brien (1990). “The Things They Carried: A Work of Fiction”, Broadway

  4 Copy quote

• You don't know. When I'm out there at night I feel close to my own body, I can feel my blood moving, my skin and fingernails, everything, it's like I'm full of electricity and I'm glowing in the dark - I'm on fire almost - I'm burning away into nothing - but it doesn't matter because I know exactly who I am.

  Tim O'Brien

  Moving, Dark, Night

  Tim O'Brien (2009). “The Things They Carried”, p.106, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

  4 Copy quote

• I guess we're really brothers, aren't we? Don't know what that means, except it means that some of the same things we remember.

  Tim O'Brien

  Brother, Mean, Remember

  Tim O'Brien (2011). “Northern Lights”, p.250, Broadway Books

  4 Copy quote

• I live in my head all day long and the world is a little dreamy.

  Tim O'Brien

  Long, World, Littles

  4 Copy quote

• you can tell a true war story if it embarrasses you. 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 vote. Send guys to war, they come home talking dirty.

  Tim O'Brien

  Real, War, Dirty

  Tim O'Brien (2009). “The Things They Carried”, p.66, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

  5 Copy quote

• It's not just the embarrassment of tears. That's part of it, no doubt, but what embarrasses me much more, and always will, is the paralysis that took my heart. A moral freeze: I couldn't decide, I couldn't act, I couldn't comport myself with even a pretense of modest human dignity.

  Tim O'Brien

  Heart, Doubt, Tears

  Tim O'Brien (2009). “The Things They Carried”, p.54, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

  4 Copy quote

• But the thing about remembering is that you don't forget. You take your material where you find it, which is in your life, at the intersection of past and present. The memory-traffic feeds into a rotary up on your head, where it goes in circles for a while, then pretty soon imagination flows in and the traffic merges and shoots off down a thousand different streets. As a writer, all you can do is pick a street and go for the ride, putting things down as they come at you. That's the real obsession. All those stories.

  Tim O'Brien

  Memories, Real, Past

  Tim O'Brien (2009). “The Things They Carried”, p.33, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

  4 Copy quote

• But I do like churches. The way it feels inside. It feels good when you just sit there, like you're in a forest and everything's really quiet, expect there's still this sound you can't hear.

  Tim O'Brien

  Feel Good, Church, Sound

  8 Copy quote

• 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

  Bears, Silent, Terrible

  Tim O'Brien (2009). “The Things They Carried”, p.7, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

  4 Copy quote

• Imagination, like reality, has its limits.

  Tim O'Brien

  Reality, Imagination, Limits

  4 Copy quote

• ...precisely where the land touched water at high tide, where things came together but also separated.

  Tim O'Brien

  Land, Water, Together

  Tim O'Brien (2009). “The Things They Carried”, p.7, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

  4 Copy quote

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

  Tim O'Brien

  War, Stories, Difficult

  Tim O'Brien (2009). “The Things They Carried”, p.67, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

  4 Copy quote

• Once you're alive, you can't ever be dead.

  Tim O'Brien

  Alive

  "The Things They Carried".

  4 Copy quote

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