Tim O'Brien Quotes
Enjoy the top 248 famous quotes, sayings and quotations by Tim O'Brien.

“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 —
— Tim O'Brien
But this too is true: stories can save us.
— Tim O'Brien
His love was too much for him, he felt paralyzed, he wanted to sleep inside her lungs and breathe her blood and be smothered.
— Tim O'Brien
Fantasy has a dark side to it. It also has a light hemisphere - the power of the human imagination to keep going, to imagine a better tomorrow.
— Tim O'Brien
— Tim O'Brien
— Tim O'Brien
“You don't have to be in Nam to be in Nam.”
— Tim O'Brien
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
— Tim O'Brien
“There was the single abiding certainty that they would never be at a loss for things to carry.”
— Tim O'Brien
— Tim O'Brien
CEASE FIRE,' Captain Johansen shouted. 'Cease fire, what's wrong with you guys? Stop wasting the goddamn ammo. CEASE FIRE!'
Cease fire,' the lieutenants hollered.
Cease fire,' the platoon sergeants hollered.
Cease the goddamn fire,' shouted the squad leaders.
That,' I told Barney, 'is the chain of command.
— 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 you he to put your own precious fluids on the line. You have to head for the front and hook up with an infantry unit and help spill the blood. And you have to bring along your wife, or your kids, or your lover. A law, I thought.
— Tim O'Brien
“What happened, and what might have happened?”
— Tim O'Brien
“And now it is time for a final act of courage. I urge you: March proudly into your own dream.”
— Tim O'Brien
She'd say amazing things sometimes. "Once you're alive," she'd say, "you cant ever be dead.
— Tim O'Brien
It's sad when you learn you're not much of a hero.
— Tim O'Brien
Anyways, the guys try to be cool. They just lie there and groove, but after a while they start hearing - you won't believe this - they hear chamber music. They hear violins and cellos. They hear this terrific mama-san soprano. Then after a while they hear gook opera and and a glee club and the Haiphong Boys Choir and a barbershop quartet and and all kinds of wierd chanting and Buddha-Buddha stuff. All the whole time, in the background, there's stil that cocktail party going on. All these different voices. Not human voices, though. Because it's the mountains. Follow me? The rock, it's TALKING. And the fog, too, and the grass and the goddamn mongooses. Everything talks. The trees talk politics, the monnkeys talk religion. The whole country. Vietnam. The place talks. It talks. Understand? Nam - it truly TALKS.
— Tim O'Brien
“Money was never a problem, passports were never required. There were always new places to dance.”
— Tim O'Brien
Inside I feel much like a 12-year-old or a 17-year-old who knows big words.
— Tim O'Brien
Love, as wonderful and horrible as it is, has at its center a kind of pitiful humor.
— Tim O'Brien
If I see a phrase that strikes me as ugly, I'll delete it. Or, if I find a way to say something a bit more freshly than it was expressed originally, I'll do it. Ultimately, you want to try to leave behind the best possible paragraph or sentence.
— Tim O'Brien
— Tim O'Brien
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