Tim O'Brien > Quotes

“He felt crazy sometimes. Real depravity. Late at night an electric sizzle came into his blood, a tight pumped-up killing rage, and he couldn't keep it in and he couldn't let it out. He wanted to hurt things. Grab a knife and start cutting and slashing and never stop. All those years. Climbing like a son of a bitch, clawing his way up inch by fucking inch, and then it all came crashing down at once.”
― Tim O'Brien, In the Lake of the Woods

“The things they carried were largely determined by necessity.”
― Tim O'Brien, The Things They Carried

“Every dark cloud may well have its silver lining, but I have come to learn that every silver lining has its dark consequences.”
― Tim O'Brien, Tomcat in Love: A Novel

“They carried their reputations. They carried the soldier’s greatest fear, which was the fear of blushing. Men killed, and died, because they were embarrassed not to. It was what had brought them to the war in the first place, nothing positive, no dreams of glory or honor, just to avoid the blush of dishonor. They died so as not to die of embarrassment.”
― Tim O'Brien, The Things They Carried

“Just because it never happened doesn't mean it isn't true.”
― Tim O'Brien

“it was not battle, it was just the endless march, village to village, without
purpose, nothing won or lost. They marched for the sake of the march.”
― Tim O'Brien

“In battle, in a war, a soldier sees only a tiny fragment of what is available to be seen. The soldier is not a photographic machine. He is not a camera. He registers, so to speak, only those few items that he is predisposed to register and not a single thing more. Do you understand this? So I am saying to you that after a battle each soldier will have different stories to tell, vastly different stories, and that when a was is ended it is as if there have been a million wars, or as many wars as there were soldiers.”
― Tim O'Brien , Going After Cacciato

“the act of writing had led me through a swirl of memories that might otherwise have ended in paralysis or worse. By telling stories, you objectify your own experience. You separate it from yourself. You pin down certain truths. You make up others. You start sometimes with an incident that truly happened, like the night in the shit field, and you carry it forward by inventing incidents that did not in fact occur but that nonetheless help to clarify and explain.”
― 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

“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

“Getting shot should be an experience from which you can draw some small pride. I don't mean the macho stuff. All I mean is that you should be able to talk about it: the stiff thump of the bullet, like a fist, the way it knocks the air out of you and makes you cough, how the sound of the gunshot arrives about ten years later, and the dizzy feeling, the smell of yourself, the things you think about and say and do right afterward, the way your eyes focus on a tiny white pebble or a blade of grass and how you start thinking, Oh man, that's the last thing I'll ever see, that pebble, that blade of grass, which makes you want to cry.

Pride isn't the right word. I don't know the right word. All I know is, you shouldn't feel embarrassed. Humiliation shouldn't be part of it.”
― Tim O'Brien, The Things They Carried

“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

“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

“Why do we care about Lizzie Borden, or Judge Crater, or Lee Harvey Oswald, or the Little Big Horn?

Mystery!

Because of all that cannot be known. And what if we did know? What if it were proved—absolutely and purely—that Lizzie Borden took an ax? That Oswald acted alone? That Judge Crater fell into Sicilian hands? Nothing more would beckon, nothing would tantalize.

The thing about Custer is this: no survivors. Hence, eternal doubt, which both frustrates and fascinates. It’s a standoff.

The human desire for certainty collides with our love of enigma. And so I lose sleep over mute facts and frayed ends and missing witnesses.

God knows I’ve tried.

Reams of data, miles of magnetic tape, but none of it satisfies even my own primitive appetite for answers. So I toss and turn. I eat pints of ice cream at two in the morning.

Would it help to announce the problem early on? To plead for understanding? To argue that solutions only demean the grandeur of human ignorance? To point out that absolute knowledge is absolute closure? To issue a reminder that death itself dissolves into uncertainty, and that out of such uncertainty arise great temples and tales of salvation?

I prowl and smoke cigarettes.

I review my notes.

The truth is at once simple and baffling: John Wade was a pro. He did his magic, then walked away. Everything else is conjecture. No answers, yet mystery itself carries me on.”
― Tim O'Brien, In the Lake of the Woods

“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

“Red and green and silver flares, all colors, and the rain came down in Technicolor.”
― 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

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

“A hundred stories [...] Ghosts rising from the dead. Ghosts behind you and in front of you and inside you.”
― 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

“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

“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

“Courage was not always a matter of yes or no. Sometimes it came in degrees, like the cold; sometimes you were very brave up to a point and then beyond that point you were not so brave.”
― Tim O'Brien, The Things They Carried

“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

“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

“Lee Strunk made a funny ghost sound, a kind of moaning, yet very happy, and right then, when Strunk made that high happy moaning sound, when he went Ahhooooo, right then Ted Lavender was shot in the head on his way back from peeing. He lay with his mouth open. The teeth were broken. There was a swollen black bruise under his left eye. The cheekbone was gone. Oh shit, Rat Kiley said, the guy's dead. The guy's dead, he kept saying, which seemed profound - the guy's dead. I mean really.”
― Tim O'Brien, The Things They Carried

“What they carried varied by mission.”
― Tim O'Brien, The Things They Carried

“Martha'nın akciğerlerinde uyumak, onun kanını solumak ve avutulmak istiyordu.”
― Tim O'Brien, The Things They Carried

“The things they carried were determined to some extent by superstition.”
― Tim O'Brien, The Things They Carried