A lot like yesterday, a lot like never. Tim O'Brien More Quotes by Tim O'Brien More Quotes From Tim O'Brien Well, right now I'm not dead. But when I am, it's like...I don't know, I guess it's like being inside a book that nobody's reading. [...] An old one. It's up on a library shelf, so you're safe and everything, but the book hasn't been checked out for a long, long time. All you can do is wait. Just hope somebody'll pick it up and start reading. Tim O'Brien readinglongbook But this too is true: stories can save us. Tim O'Brien true-storystories Writing doesn’t get easier with experience. The more you know, the harder it is to write. Tim O'Brien hardereasierwriting 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, expect there's still this sound you can't hear. Tim O'Brien feel-goodchurchsound First Lieutenant Jimmy Cross carried letters from a girl named Martha, a junior at Mount Sebastian College in New Jersey. They were not love letters, but Lieutenant Cross was hoping, so he kept them folded in plastic at the bottom of his rusack. In the late afternoon, after a day's march, he would dig his foxhole, wash his hands under a canteen, unwrap the letters, hold them with the tips of his fingers, and spend the last hour of light pretending. Tim O'Brien girllightcollege He wished he could've explained some of this. How he had been braver than he ever thought possible, but how he had not been so brave as he wanted to be. The distinction was important. Tim O'Brien distinctionimportantbrave You don't know. When I'm out there at night I feel close to my own body, I can feel my blood moving, my skin and fingernails, everything, it's like I'm full of electricity and I'm glowing in the dark - I'm on fire almost - I'm burning away into nothing - but it doesn't matter because I know exactly who I am. Tim O'Brien darknightmoving He had an opinion of himself, I think, that was too high for his own good. Or maybe it was the reverse. Maybe it was a low opinion that he kept trying to erase. Tim O'Brien opiniontryingthinking ...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 finding-yourselfcolorrivers A miracle to confound natural law, a baffling reversal of the inevitable consequences . . . a miracle. . . . An act of high imagination -- daring and lurid and impossible. Yes, a cartoon of the mind. Tim O'Brien miracleimaginationlaw In any war story, but especially a true one, it's difficult to separate what happened from what seemed to happen. What seems to happen becomes its own happening and has to be told that way. The angles of vision are skewed. When a booby trap explodes, you close your eyes and duck and float outside yourself. .. The pictures get jumbled, you tend to miss a lot. And then afterward, when you go to tell about it, there is always that surreal seemingness, which makes the story seem untrue, but which in fact represents the hard and exact truth as it seemed. Tim O'Brien duckseyewar And in the end, of course, a true war story is never about war. It's about sunlight. It's about the special way that dawn spreads out on a river when you know you must cross the river and march into the mountains and do things you are afraid to do. It's about love and memory. It's about sorrow. It's about sisters who never write back and people who never listen. Tim O'Brien writingmemorieswar But in a story I can steal her soul. Tim O'Brien stealingsoulstories Once you're alive, you can't ever be dead. Tim O'Brien alive With a hangover and with fear, it is difficult to put a helmet on your head. Tim O'Brien hangoverdifficultfear The presence of danger has a way of making you feel fully awake. Tim O'Brien awakedangerway Imagination is a killer. Tim O'Brien killersimagination There was the single abiding certainty that they would never be at a loss for things to carry. Tim O'Brien abidingcertaintyloss Mitchell Sanders was right. For the common soldier, at least, war has the feel-the spiritual texture-of a great ghostly fog, thick and permanent. There is no clarity. Everything swirls. The old rules are no longer binding, the old truths no longer true. Right spills over into wrong. Order blends into chaos, love into hate, ugliness into beauty, law into anarchy, civility into savagery. The vapors suck you in. You can't tell where you are, or why you're there, and the only certainty is overwhelming ambiguity. Tim O'Brien hatespiritualwar Imagination, like reality, has its limits. Tim O'Brien limitsimaginationreality
