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
A true war story is never moral.
Interpretation
What this quote means
The essence of a true war story lies in its authenticity rather than moral lessons.
Tim O'Brien's quote, 'A true war story is never moral,' suggests that the complexities of war often do not lend themselves to clear moral outcomes. Instead, real war stories tend to capture the raw, chaotic experiences of those who lived through them, highlighting the uncertainties and contradictions inherent in warfare rather than offering simple lessons about good and evil.
Themes
WarTruthStorytellingMoralityExperience
In practice
Example use cases
In a discussion about the complexities of veterans' stories during a conference.
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.
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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
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In listening to the narratives of the Congolese, I came to terms with the extent to which their bodies had become battlefields.
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If in some smothering dreams you too could pace Behind the wagon that we flung him in, And watch the white eyes writhing in his face, His hanging face, like a devil's sick of sin; If you could hear, at every jolt, the blood Come gargling from the froth-corrupted lungs, Obscene as cancer, bitter as the cud Of vile, incurable sores on innocent tongues,-- My friend, you would not tell with such high zest To children ardent for some desperate glory, The old Lie: Dulce et decorum est pro patria mori.
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