318 Quotes by Tim O'Brien
- Author Tim O'Brien
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He wanted to heat up the truth, to make it burn so hot that you would feel exactly what he felt.
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- Author Tim O'Brien
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I suppose if we gain anything from this unsought experience it will be an appreciation for honesty- frankness on the part of our politicians, our friends, our loves, ourselves. No more liars in public places. (And the bed and the bar are, in their way, as public as the floor of Congress.)
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- Author Tim O'Brien
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Words, too, have genuine substance -- mass and weight and specific gravity.
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- Author Tim O'Brien
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In many ways he was like America itself, big and strong, full of good intentions, a roll of fat jiggling at his belly, slow of foot but always plodding along, always there when you needed him, a believer in the virtues of simplicity and directness and hard labor.
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- Author Tim O'Brien
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But I do like churches. The way it feels inside. It feels good when you just sit there, like you're in a forest and everything's really quiet, except there's still this sound you can't hear.
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- Author Tim O'Brien
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A thing may happen and be a total lie; another thing may not happen and be truer than the truth.
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- Author Tim O'Brien
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It was my view then, and still is, that you don't make war without knowing why. Knowledge of course, is always imperfect, but it seemed to me that when a nation goes to war it must have reasonable confidence in the justice and imperative of its cause. You can't fix your mistakes. Once people are dead, you can't make them undead.
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- Author Tim O'Brien
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you can tell a true war story if it embarrasses you. If you don't care for obscenity, you don't care for the truth; if you don't care for the truth, watch how you vote. Send guys to war, they come home talking dirty.
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- Author Tim O'Brien
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I'm skimming across the surface of my own history, moving fast, riding the melt beneath the blades, doing loops and spins, and when I take a high leap into the dark and come down thirty years later, I realize it is as Tim trying to save Timmy's life with a story.
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