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f317cb0
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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..
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Tim O'Brien |
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5301a93
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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 ..
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Tim O'Brien |
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4ef9f8a
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people who were so incredibly alive could get so incredibly dead.
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Tim O'Brien |
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9a2fee6
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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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Tim O'Brien |
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35128cf
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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. For Rat Kiley, I think, facts were formed by sensation, not the other way around" (p89 "Sweetheart of Song Tra Bong")"
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Tim O'Brien |
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30aa02f
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That's a true story that never happened.
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Tim O'Brien |
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f645ab5
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They were afraid of dying but they were even more afraid to show it...they died so as not to die of embarrassment...they were too frightened to be cowards." (p 20-21 "TTTC")"
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Tim O'Brien |
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7f74c9f
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It was the burden of being alive. Awkwardly, the men would reassemble themselves, first in private, then in groups, becoming soldiers again. They would repair the leaks in their eyes. They would check for casualties, call in dustoffs, light cigarettes, try to smile, clear their throats and spit and begin cleaning their weapons.
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Tim O'Brien |
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2897571
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To, chto Dzhon Ueid poshel na voinu, bylo zalozheno v prirode liubvi. Ne radi togo on poshel, chtoby grobit' drugikh ili sebia, ne radi togo, chtoby byt' khoroshim grazhdaninom, ili geroem, ili chelovekom nravstvennogo dolga. Tol'ko radi liubvi. Tol'ko chtoby byt' liubimym. On voobrazhal, kak otets, kotorogo uzhe net na svete, govorit emu: <
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trauma
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Tim O'Brien |
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b91997c
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They carried the common secret of cowardice barely restrained, the instinct to run or freeze or hide, and in many respects this was the heaviest burden of all, for it could never be put down, it required perfect balance and perfect posture.
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Tim O'Brien |
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62376fa
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If you weren't humping, you were waiting. I remember the monotony. Digging foxholes. Slapping mosquitoes. The sun and the heat and the endless paddies. Even in the deep bush, where you could die any number of ways, the war was nakedly and aggressively boring. But it was a strange boredom. It was boredom with a twist, the kind of boredom that caused stomach disorders. You'd be sitting at the top of a high hill, the flat paddies stretching ou..
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Tim O'Brien |
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e020d18
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The greater a man's fear, the greater his potential courage.
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Tim O'Brien |
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f82efe0
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It was not courage, exactly; the object was not valor. Rather, they were too frightened to be cowards.
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Tim O'Brien |
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d8f45f7
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Even in the deep bush, where you could die any number of ways, the war was nakedly and aggressively boring. But it was a strange boredom. It was boredom with a twist, the kind of boredom that caused stomach disorders. You'd be sitting at the top of a high hill, the flat paddies stretching out below, and the day would be calm and hot and utterly vacant, and you'd feel the boredom dripping inside you like a leaky faucet, except it wasn't wate..
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Tim O'Brien |
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b03d309
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There were red checkers and black checkers. The playing field was laid out in a strict grid, no tunnels or mountains or jungles. You knew where you stood. You knew the score. The pieces were out on the board, the enemy was visible, you could watch the tactics unfolding into larger strategies. There was a winner and a loser. There were rules.
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Tim O'Brien |
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37a9fbc
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There should be a law, I thought. If you support a war, if you think it's worth the price, that's fine, but you have to put your own precious fluids on the line. You have to head for the front and hook up with an infantry unit and help spill the blood. And you have to bring along your wife, or your kids, or your lover. A law, I thought.
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Tim O'Brien |
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d682707
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What seems to happen becomes its own happening and has to be told that way. [...]And 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.
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Tim O'Brien |
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fe9974a
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It's about love and memory. It's about sorrow. It's about sisters who never write back and people who never listen.
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Tim O'Brien |
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6345305
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They were afraid of dying but even more afraid to show it.
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Tim O'Brien (author) |
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330fc62
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I survived, but it's not a happy ending. I was a coward. I went to the war.
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Tim O'Brien (author) |
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993a84c
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Did I choose this life of illusion? Don't be mad. My bed was made, I just lied in it. (p. 87)
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Tim O'Brien (author) |