Tim O'Brien > Quotes

“Maybe it's a crackpot theory, but in the aftermath of my sickness, I've often wondered if what we call insanity might be a biological response to mankind's consciousness of its own mortality, a way of unknowing what we know, a defense against the specter of nothingness and foreverness and intolerable finality.”
― Tim O'Brien, Dad's Maybe Book

“In a way I wanted to stop myself. It was cruel, I knew that, but right and wrong were somewhere else.”
― Tim O'Brien, The Things They Carried

“On occasions the war was like a Ping-Pong ball. You could put fancy spin on it, you could make it dance.”
― Tim O'Brien

“Sun and waves and gentle winds, all love and lightness.”
― Tim O'Brien, The Things They Carried

“It was a brisk, polite town. It did not know shit about shit, and did not care to know. Norman Bowker leaned back and considered what he might’ve said on the subject. He knew shit. It was his specialty. The smell, in particular, but also the numerous varieties of texture and taste. Someday he’d give a lecture on the topic. Put on a suit and tie and stand up in front of the Kiwanis club and tell the fuckers about all the wonderful shit he knew. Pass out samples, maybe.”
― Tim O'Brien, The Things They Carried

“Looking back after twenty years, I sometimes wonder if the events of that summer didn’t happen in some other dimension, a place where your life exists before you’ve lived it, and where it goes afterward.”
― Tim O'Brien, The Things They Carried

“Though it's odd, you're never more alive than when you're almost dead. You recognize what's valuable. Freshly, as if for the first time, you love what's best in yourself and in the world, all that might be lost.”
― Tim O'Brien, The Things They Carried

“Can a word stop your heart as surely as arsenic?”
― Tim O'Brien, Tomcat in Love

“In the midst of evil you want to be a good man. You want decency. You want justice and courtesy and human concord, things you never knew you wanted. There is a kind of largeness to it, a kind of godliness. Though it’s odd, you’re never more alive than when you’re almost dead. You recognize what’s valuable. Freshly, as if for the first time, you love what’s best in yourself and in the world, all that might be lost. At the hour of dusk you sit at your foxhole and look out on a wide river turning pinkish red, and at the mountains beyond, and although in the morning you must cross the river and go into the mountains and do terrible things and maybe die, even so, 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'Brien, The Things They Carried

“But this, too, was a performance.”
― Tim O'Brien, Tomcat in Love: A Novel

“Fakat şu da doğru; hikayeler bizi kurtarabilir.”
― Tim O'Brien, The Things They Carried

“I'm young and happy. I'll never die.”
― Tim O'Brien

“how much I detested their blind, thoughtless, automatic acquiescence to it all, their simpleminded patriotism, their prideful ignorance, their love-it-or-leave-it platitudes,”
― Tim O'Brien, The Things They Carried

“His jaw was in his throat, his upper lip and teeth were gone, his one eye was shut, his other eye was a star-shaped hole, his eyebrows were thin and arched like a woman's, his nose was undamaged, there was a slight tear at the lobe of one ear, his clean black hair was swept upward into a cowlick at the rear of the skull, his forehead was lightly freckled, his fingernails were clean, the skin at his left cheek was peeled back in three ragged strips, his right cheek was smooth and hairless, there was a butterfly on his chin, his neck was open to the spinal cord and the blood there was thick and shiny and it was this wound that had killed him. He lay face-up in the center of the trail, a slim, dead, almost dainty young man.”
― Tim O'Brien, The Things They Carried

“My whole life seemed to spill out into the river, swirling away from me, everything I had ever been or ever wanted to be.”
― Tim O'Brien, The Things They Carried

“Peace of mind is not a simple matter of pursuing one’s own pleasure; rather, it is inextricably linked to the attitudes of other human beings, to what they want, to what they expect.”
― Tim O'Brien, Going After Cacciato

“Building the Mean Streak was not a mistake. We needed a wooden coaster and we were hoping for a Beast. But it was never on the same planet as the Beast. Nothing has ever come close to the Beast.”
― Tim O'Brien, Dick Kinzel: Roller Coaster King of Cedar Point Amusement Point

“Anyways, the guys try to be cool. They just lie there and groove, but after a while they start hearing - you won't believe this - they hear chamber music. They hear violins and cellos. They hear this terrific mama-san soprano. Then after a while they hear gook opera and and a glee club and the Haiphong Boys Choir and a barbershop quartet and and all kinds of wierd chanting and Buddha-Buddha stuff. All the whole time, in the background, there's stil that cocktail party going on. All these different voices. Not human voices, though. Because it's the mountains. Follow me? The rock, it's TALKING. And the fog, too, and the grass and the goddamn mongooses. Everything talks. The trees talk politics, the monnkeys talk religion. The whole country. Vietnam. The place talks. It talks. Understand? Nam - it truly TALKS.”
― Tim O'Brien

“Zapped while zipping.”
― Tim O'Brien, The Things They Carried

“I saw no unity of purpose, no consensus on matters of philosophy or history or law. The very facts were shrouded in uncertainty: Was it a civil war? A war of national liberation or simple aggression? Who started it, and when, and why? What really happened to the USS Maddox on that dark night in the Gulf of Tonkin? Was Ho Chi Minh a Communist stooge, or a nationalist savior, or both, or neither? What about the Geneva Accords? What about SEATO and the Cold War? What about dominoes? America was divided on these and a thousand other issues, and the debate had spilled out across the floor of the United States Senate and into the streets, and smart men in pinstripes could not agree on even the most fundamental matters of public policy. The only certainty that summer was moral confusion.”
― Tim O'Brien, The Things They Carried

“Like when Ted Lavender went too heavy on the tranquilizers. 'How's the war today?' somebody would say, and Ted Lavender would give a soft, spacey smile and say, 'Mellow, man. We got ourselves a nice mellow war today.”
― Tim O'Brien, The Things They Carried

“Red and green and silver flares, all colors, and the rain came down in Technicolor.”
― Tim O'Brien, The Things They Carried

“You have taken many risks. You have been brave beyond your wildest expectations. And now it is time for a final act of courage. I urge you: March proudly into your own dream.”
― Tim O'Brien, Going After Cacciato

“I am forever astonished at the longevity of childhood. How it never ends. How we are what we were. How turtles and engines and stolen kisses leave their jet trail across our gaping lives.”
― Tim O'Brien, Tomcat in Love

“The rock- it's talking. And the fog, too, and the grass and the goddamn mongooses. Everything talks. The trees talk politics, the monkeys talk religion. The whole country. Vietnam. The place talks. It talks. Understand? Nam- it truly talks.”
― Tim O'Brien

“If time and space were in fact entwined along the loop of relativity, how then could anyone ever reach a point of no return? Were not all such points contrivance? Therefore meaningless? So, again, what was the point?
Not to return.”
― Tim O'Brien, In the Lake of the Woods

“Продумывая детали, Уэйд неожиданно проникся новым, угрюмым сочувствием к отцу. Вот, значит, как оно было. Ходишь, делаешь свои дела. Несешь эту ношу, замуровываешь себя в молчание, прячешь адскую правду от всех остальных и большую часть времени от себя тоже. Никакой театральности. Гребешь снег, околачиваешься в политике или торгуешь в ювелирном магазине; периодически ищешь забвения», предаешь настоящее каждым вдохом из пузыря с прогнившим прошлым. А потом в один прекрасный день обнаруживаешь бельевую веревку. Изумляешься. Подтаскиваешь мусорный бак, влезаешь и подцепляешь себя к вечности, словно включаешься в электрическую сеть. Ни записок, ни схем – никаких объяснений. В чем искусство и состоит – искусство отца, искусство Кэти: величественный переход в область чистой, всеобъемлющей Тайны. Не надо путать, подумал он, абсолютное зло с несчастливым детством. Узнать – значит разочароваться. Понять – значит быть преданным. Все жалкие «как» и «почему», все низменные мотивы, все абсцессы души, все отвратительные мелкие уродства личности и истории – не более чем реквизит, который ты прячешь до самого конца Пусть публика завывает во тьме, потрясает кулаками, пусть одни кричат – Как? , другие – Почему?”
― Tim O'Brien, In the Lake of the Woods

“How do you generalize? 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 despair and longing and love. War is nasty; war is fun. War is thrilling; war is drudgery. War makes you a man; war makes you dead. The truths are contradictory.”
― Tim O'Brien, The Things They Carried

“They wanted happiness without knowing what it was, or where to look, which made them want it all the more.”
― Tim O'Brien, In the Lake of the Woods

“It was not courage, exactly; the object was not valor. Rather, they were too frightened to be cowards.”
― Tim O'Brien, The Things They Carried