The wars don't end when you sign peace treaties or when the years go by. They will echo on until I'm gone and all the widows and orphans are gone.
Tim O'BrienRead
Laughter does not deny pain. Laughter - like a wail - acknowledges and replies to pain.
Interpretation
What this quote means
Laughter accepts the existence of pain rather than ignoring it.
This quote suggests that laughter is a genuine response to pain, similar to a wail. It emphasizes that laughter does not dismiss suffering; instead, it recognizes and confronts it, highlighting the complex relationship between joy and sorrow in the human experience.
Themes
LaughterPainAcknowledgmentSorrowHuman Experience
In practice
Example use cases
During a speech at a mental health awareness event, one could use this quote to illustrate the importance of recognizing emotions.
More from Tim O'Brien
All quotes β...you find yourself studying the fine colors on the river, you feel wonder and awe at the setting of the sun, and you are filled with a hard, aching love for how the world could be and always should be, but now is not.
Tim O'BrienRead
Unlike Chicago or New York, small-town Minnesota did not allow a man's failings to disappear beneath a veil of numbers. People talked. Secrets did not stay secret.
Tim O'BrienRead
Place is so important to me. The Midwest is like a ghost in my life. It's present as I look out the window now. I see Texas, but if I close my eyes and look out the same window, I'm back in my hometown in Worthington, Minnesota, and I cherish those values and that diction.
Tim O'BrienRead
In fiction workshops, we tend to focus on matters of verisimilitude largely because such issues are so much easier to talk about than the failure of imagination.
Tim O'BrienRead
War is a fundamental aspect of human existence. It's good to know what war entails and what the human sacrifice is.
Tim O'BrienRead
Similar quotes
As a child I was a great liar. Fortunately my mother liked my lies. I promised her marvelous things.
Gunter GrassRead
The rain that fell on the city runs down the dark gutters and empties into the sea without even soaking the ground
Haruki MurakamiRead
Joy, rather than happiness, is the goal of life, for joy is the emotion which accompanies our fulfilling our natures as human beings. It is based on the experience of one's identity as a being of worth and dignity.
Rollo MayRead
If men were born free, they would, so long as they remained free, form no conception of good and evil.
Baruch SpinozaRead
This mindless tolerance, which places observable scientific facts, subject to proof, on the same level as unprovable supernatural fantasy, has played a major role in the resurgence of both anti-intellectualism and anti-rationalism.
Susan JacobyRead
I feel very strongly that Iβm surrounded by other realities.
Ingmar BergmanRead