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
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.
Interpretation
What this quote means
The quote reflects our deep curiosity about the inner lives of others and our desire to understand what is often hidden.
Tim O'Brien expresses the universal human fascination with the experiences and inner thoughts of others, which seem to remain forever distant and elusive. He highlights our efforts to break through the barriers that separate us from understanding one another fully, whether through imagination, dreams, or scientific inquiry, acknowledging that these walls can make the human spirit seem permanently inaccessible.
Themes
Human SpiritUnderstandingOthernessCuriosityBarriers
In practice
Example use cases
This quote can be used in a discussion about interpersonal relationships to emphasize the challenge of truly knowing another person.
More from Tim O'Brien
All quotes →...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.
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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.
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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.
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