They carried all the emotional baggage of men who might die. Grief, terror, love, longing--these were intangibles, but the intangibles had their own mass and specific gravity, they had tangible weight. They carried shameful memories. They carried the common secret of cowardice.... Men killed, and died, because they were embarrassed not to.
War is hell, but that's not the half of it, because war is also mystery and terror and adventure and courage and discovery and holiness and pity and … - 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 discovery and holiness and pity and …
- Tim O'Brien
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
I want you to feel what I felt. I want you to know why story-truth is truer sometimes than happening-truth.
If a story seems moral, do not believe it. If at the end of a war story you feel uplifted, or if you feel that some small bit of rectitude has been s… - 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 you feel that some small bit of rectitude has been s…
Fiction is the lie that helps us understand the truth. - Tim O'Brien
Fiction is the lie that helps us understand the truth.
Stories are for joining the past to the future. Stories are for those late hours in the night when you can't remember how you got from where you were… - Tim O'Brien
Stories are for joining the past to the future. Stories are for those late hours in the night when you can't remember how you got from where you were…
If you don't care for obscenity, you don't care for the truth. - Tim O'Brien
If you don't care for obscenity, you don't care for the truth.
Life is never all one thing. It bounces around. Certainly, my own life has. - Tim O'Brien
Life is never all one thing. It bounces around. Certainly, my own life has.
My life is storytelling. I believe in stories, in their incredible power to keep people alive, to keep the living alive, and the dead. - Tim O'Brien
My life is storytelling. I believe in stories, in their incredible power to keep people alive, to keep the living alive, and the dead.
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
That's what fiction is for. It's for getting at the truth when the truth isn't sufficient for the truth.
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