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
...his love was too much for him, he felt paralyzed, he wanted to sleep inside her lungs and breathe her blood and be smothered.
Interpretation
The quote expresses an overwhelming and consuming desire for deep intimacy and connection.
In this quote, Tim O'Brien captures the intense and often overwhelming nature of love, depicting it as an all-encompassing force that can leave one feeling paradoxically both alive and immobilized. The vivid imagery suggests a longing for such closeness that it transcends physical boundaries, indicating that true love can invoke feelings of vulnerability and a desire for total union with the beloved.
In practice
This quote can be used in a romantic speech to express deep feelings for a partner.
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.
...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.
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.
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.
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.
War is a fundamental aspect of human existence. It's good to know what war entails and what the human sacrifice is.
Is it not a sad thing that after all Christ's love to us, we should repay it with lukewarm love to Him?
Love is not consolation, it is light.
My parents always looked like they loved being together. That's what I took from them, and that's how my wife and I are. I still feel like we're dating.
If we want to fully experience love and belonging, we must believe that we are worthy of love and belonging.
Love cannot be forced, love cannot be coaxed and teased. It comes out of heaven, unasked and unsought.
Life is just a little opportunity for you during a few years to say, "I love you, too."
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