They did not submit to the obvious alternative, which was simply to close the eyes and fall. So easy...
TIM O'BRIEN That's what fiction is for. It's for getting at the truth when the truth isn't sufficient for the tr...
TIM O'BRIEN I guess we're really brothers, aren't we? Don't know what that means, except it means that some of t...
TIM O'BRIEN you can tell a true war story if it embarrasses you. If you don't care for obscenity, you don't care...
TIM O'BRIEN It’s a hard thing to explain to somebody who hasn’t felt it, but the presence of death and dange...
TIM O'BRIEN ...his love was too much for him, he felt paralyzed, he wanted to sleep inside her lungs and breathe...
TIM O'BRIEN But this too is true: stories can save us.
TIM O'BRIEN They carried all they could bear, and then some, including a silent awe for the terrible power of th...
TIM O'BRIEN When a man died, there had to be blame. Jimmy Cross understood this. You could blame the war, You co...
TIM O'BRIEN Words, too, have genuine substance -- mass and weight and specific gravity.
TIM O'BRIEN We are fascinated, all of us, by the implacable otherness of others. And we wish to penetrate those ...
TIM O'BRIEN It's sad when you learn you're not much of a hero.
TIM O'BRIEN You don't know. When I'm out there at night I feel close to my own body, I can feel my blood moving,...
TIM O'BRIEN They carried all the emotional baggage of men who might die. Grief, terror, love, longing--these wer...
TIM O'BRIEN I was a coward. I went to the war.
TIM O'BRIEN To generalize about war is like generalizing about peace. Almost everything is true. Almost nothing ...
TIM O'BRIEN Linda was nine then, as I was, but we were in love...it had all the shadings and complexities of mat...
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 bein...
TIM O'BRIEN Together we understood what terror was: you're not human anymore. You're a shadow. You slip out of y...
TIM O'BRIEN It wasn't a question of deceit. Just the opposite; he wanted to heat up the truth, to make it burn s...
TIM O'BRIEN In any war story, but especially a true one, it's difficult to separate what happened from what seem...
TIM O'BRIEN It was my view then, and still is, that you don't make war without knowing why. Knowledge of course,...
TIM O'BRIEN He wished he could've explained some of this. How he had been braver than he ever thought possible, ...
TIM O'BRIEN And sometimes remembering will lead to a story, which makes it forever. That's what stories are for....
TIM O'BRIEN What sticks to memory, often, are those odd little fragments that have no beginning and no end...
TIM O'BRIEN It was very sad, he thought. The things men carried inside. The things men did or felt they had to d...
TIM O'BRIEN you're never more alive than when you're almost dead.
TIM O'BRIEN But in a story, which is a kind of dreaming, the dead sometimes smile and sit up and return to the w...
TIM O'BRIEN War is hell, but that's not the half of it, because war is also mystery and terror and adventure and...
TIM O'BRIEN Stories are for joining the past to the future. Stories are for those late hours in the night when y...
TIM O'BRIEN The thing about a story is that you dream it as you tell it, hoping that others might then dream alo...
TIM O'BRIEN But the thing about remembering is that you don't forget.
TIM O'BRIEN A true war story is never moral. It does not instruct, nor encourage virtue, nor suggest models of p...
TIM O'BRIEN They carried the sky. The whole atmosphere, they carried it, the humidity, the monsoons, the stink o...
TIM O'BRIEN A thing may happen and be a total lie; another thing may not happen and be truer than the truth.
TIM O'BRIEN I want you to feel what I felt. I want you to know why story-truth is truer sometimes than happening...
TIM O'BRIEN …he wanted to sleep inside her lungs and breathe her blood and be smothered. He wanted her to be a...
TIM O'BRIEN Do we choose sleep? Hell no and bullshit - we fall. We give ourselves over to possibility, to whim a...
TIM O'BRIEN But the thing about remembering is that you don't forget. You take your material where you find it, ...
TIM O'BRIEN A lie, sometimes, can be truer than the truth, which is why fiction gets written.
TIM O'BRIEN Men killed, and died, because they were embarrassed not to.
TIM O'BRIEN They would repair the leaks in their eyes.
TIM O'BRIEN I suppose if we gain anything from this unsought experience it will be an appreciation for honesty- ...
TIM O'BRIEN We are fascinated, all of us, by the implacable otherness of others. And we wish to penetrate by hyp...
TIM O'BRIEN And in the end, of course, a true war story is never about war. It's about sunlight. It's about the ...
TIM O'BRIEN What stories can do, I guess, is make things present.

I can look at things I never looked...
TIM O'BRIEN Forty-three years old, and the war occurred half a lifetime ago, and yet the remembering makes it no...
TIM O'BRIEN I'm skimming across the surface of my own history, moving fast, riding the melt beneath the blades, ...
TIM O'BRIEN Even then, at nine years old, I wanted to live inside her body. I wanted to melt into her bones - TH...
TIM O'BRIEN In many ways he was like America itself, big and strong, full of good intentions, a roll of fat jigg...
TIM O'BRIEN But I do like churches. The way it feels inside. It feels good when you just sit there, like you're ...
TIM O'BRIEN You never loved me, Farin. You never even said you liked me very much.
HEATHER O'BRIEN Well, I'm not sure where this puts me, Sire. I mean, at least with the others I know what's expected...
AMIE O'BRIEN Moderation, we find, is an extremely difficult thing to get in this country.
FLANN O'BRIEN In our deepest moments we say the most inadequate things.
EDNA O'BRIEN Darkness is drawn to light, but light does not know it; light must absorb the darkness and therefore...
EDNA O'BRIEN I would not hurt you, little man,' he said.

'I think that I got the disorder in Mullingar...
FLANN O'BRIEN Romance and romantic are different. Death, itself, can be romantic. Nature and a destructive snowsto...
R.B. O'BRIEN Don’t tell me my writing is misogynistic or anti-feminist just because I or my heroines like to be...
R.B. O'BRIEN Experience has taught me that what you love, you should love all the harder because someday it will ...
RONAN O'BRIEN If you work really hard, and you're kind, amazing things will happen.
CONAN O'BRIEN By subsidiarity is meant the principle that responsibilities should be devolved to the lowest viable...
DENIS O'BRIEN My father...was a man who understood all dogs thoroughly and treated them like human beings.
FLANN O'BRIEN When all else fails, there's always delusion.
CONAN O'BRIEN I was always the girl growing up who just wasn’t quite like the rest of them. I liked working hard...
R.B. O'BRIEN Guy welcomed my breasts warmly. He hugged them like long-lost friends and stared at them with the pr...
ALLY O'BRIEN A truly happy person is one who can enjoy the scenery on a detour.
JOAN O'BRIEN All I ask is one thing, and I’m asking this particularly of young people: please don’t be cynica...
CONAN O'BRIEN If Mr. Fantastic and Professor X had a baby, there would be tons of questions, but also it would be ...
DANIEL O'BRIEN ...is there any body of citizens in the country who actually welcome and enjoy a General Election?.....
FLANN O'BRIEN I discovered that everything you do is in response to a request or a suggestion made to you by some ...
FLANN O'BRIEN Teddy Roosevelt had handpicked Taft as his successor, and when Teddy Roosevelt tells you to do somet...
DANIEL O'BRIEN Discovering and fulfilling your personal destiny is life’s ultimate challenge and its greatest rew...
PAUL O'BRIEN Understanding your strengths and weaknesses is an unending process of self-discovery and creative ev...
PAUL O'BRIEN When you find your path in life and are in sync with your primary missions in this lifetime, everyth...
PAUL O'BRIEN Christmas is the marriage of chaos and design. The real sound of life, for once, can burst out becau...
GEOFFREY O'BRIEN The beauty is that through disappointment you can gain clarity, and with clarity comes conviction an...
CONAN O'BRIEN The fun is in figuring out why the French are susceptible to such tripe.
BILL O'BRIEN I've learned that fear limits you and your vision. It serves as blinders to what may be just a f...
SOLEDAD O'BRIEN It was great but intense to try to go back into a character’s mind, a mind that is filled with sel...
R.B. O'BRIEN Fiction should be in its way subversive. I don't think books should be neat or gentle or genteel or ...
EDNA O'BRIEN Writing is the Art, re-writing the craft.
O'BRIEN BROWNE FDR’s struggle with illness and subsequent metal-filled life are remarkably similar to the story o...
DANIEL O'BRIEN Shall I compare thee to a Shoggoth?
D.R. O'BRIEN Music and comedy are so linked. The rhythm of comedy is con­nected to the rhythm of music. They’r...
CONAN O'BRIEN The unceasing flow of thought in all its various forms is an inescapable and defining aspect of the ...
PAUL O'BRIEN When my world record got broken in 1999, it hurt a little bit, to say the least. But I was in a leg ...
DAN O'BRIEN Breaking the world record in '92 was a very special personal moment, but I'd say my favorite...
DAN O'BRIEN Nowadays, to be a good world-ranked decathlete, you need to be good at everything.
DAN O'BRIEN I didn't get a ton of interest from colleges in baseball and football, but I was outstanding in ...
DAN O'BRIEN There are only two things you’ll ever need to know about me, Farin—and you should know them well...
HEATHER O'BRIEN Yeah, I've only been acting since I was 18 out of high school.
DYLAN O'BRIEN I don't really give much thought to the roles that I'd ideally love to play.
DYLAN O'BRIEN I feel like I'm good with girls. I understand them and am good at loving them. I've always f...
DYLAN O'BRIEN I'm never offered any sort of roles. I need to audition in a typically lengthy process to receiv...
DYLAN O'BRIEN In high school, girls started wearing high-waisted pants with their shirts tucked into them. I don&#...
DYLAN O'BRIEN With TV, you just have to finish the days and get the episodes out. And it's always going to be ...
DYLAN O'BRIEN I love baseball - 'Moneyball' was my favorite book when I was 13.
DYLAN O'BRIEN I'd like to get into some sort of workout regimen so I can properly be healthy and exercise like...
DYLAN O'BRIEN Growing up, I was in love with Jennifer Aniston from 'Friends.'
DYLAN O'BRIEN I just want to work with good filmmakers and do good projects that mean something to me and play int...
DYLAN O'BRIEN I'm always a little innately shy when I first talk to a girl, and I think I always will be! But ...
DYLAN O'BRIEN I'm a big root beer guy.
DYLAN O'BRIEN My heroes are guys like Tom Hanks, Leonardo DiCaprio, and Matt Damon. These are amazing actors with ...
DYLAN O'BRIEN I just happened to step into acting. And now I can't imagine myself doing anything else.
DYLAN O'BRIEN The thing I like a lot about acting is I'll never learn enough. I'll never know it inside an...
DYLAN O'BRIEN I moved to California when I was twelve and I got a video camera and made little movies because I di...
DYLAN O'BRIEN I didn't have that many friends my first few years of high school. It was very cliquey and I'...
DYLAN O'BRIEN The perfect date is the one where anything and everything goes wrong, but at the end of it, all you ...
DYLAN O'BRIEN Part of growing up is realizing you learn to love so many people. It's about forming those relat...
DYLAN O'BRIEN You don't disrupt genius at work.
DYLAN O'BRIEN I might be celibate, but I appreciate the wonder of the sacrament of marriage.
KEITH O'BRIEN And so I write. I write my life. I write to escape real life. I write to live moments over again. I ...
R.B. O'BRIEN We love the night and its quiet; and there is no night that we love so well as that on which the moo...
FITZ-JAMES O'BRIEN The real point is this: We don't know where to go because we don't know what we are. Do you want to ...
ROBERT C. O'BRIEN There were two sets of encyclopedias that had sections on rats. From them we learned that we were ab...
ROBERT C. O'BRIEN Still, it seemed to us that the main reason we were hated must be that we always lived by stealing. ...
ROBERT C. O'BRIEN When you decide something's right, there's nothing that can stop you from doing it.
CARAGH M. O'BRIEN My brother trolled recovery and support groups, searching for women with dependency issues, the way ...
RICHARD J. O'BRIEN I have lived in this tree, in this same hollow," the owl said, "for more years than anyone can remem...
ROBERT C. O'BRIEN Automobiles are unreliable and dangerous slaves. They frequently revolt and kill their masters. I ha...
MICHAEL D. O'BRIEN Would you have this?” the Protectorat hissed at his son.
Rafael's gaze narrowed in a slow ins...
CARAGH M. O'BRIEN Even the worst feeling, with time and familiarity, became tolerable.
CARAGH M. O'BRIEN There are some things, once they are done, that we can never question, because if we did, we wouldn'...
CARAGH M. O'BRIEN She’d heard of love triangles before, but a love square?
CARAGH M. O'BRIEN It isn't always easy between us. I admit that. But it's right between us, always.
CARAGH M. O'BRIEN Yet he saw that in all places there was originality, resulting from the human efforts at decoration ...
MICHAEL D. O'BRIEN Golosh Street is an interesting locality. All the oddities of trade seemed to have found their way t...
FITZ-JAMES O'BRIEN He hoped and feared,' continued Solon, in a low. mournful voice; 'but at times he was very miserable...
FITZ-JAMES O'BRIEN Dream hard. Work harder. Shine.
CARAGH M. O'BRIEN Now I really have it all. I've been given some bullshit in my time, but that....
TIM O'ROURKE The nice thing about twitter is the architecture of visibility. Email is invisible unless you reach ...
TIM O'REILLY I am one and when I am one I am none, and when I am none I have won.
JULIEANNE O'CONNOR There is something in us, as storytellers and as listeners to stories, that demands the redemptive a...
FLANNERY O'CONNOR I suppose we all have our little hiding-hole if the truth was known, but as small as it is, the whol...
FRANK O'CONNOR We are the music-makers,
And we are the dreamers of dreams,
Wandering by lone sea-breakers...
ARTHUR O'SHAUGHNESSY Where I was born and where and how I have lived is unimportant. It is what I have done with where I ...
GEORGIA O'KEEFFE Virtue should always be colmingled with humor.
PATRICK O'BRIAN One of the tasks of true friendship is to listen compassionately and creatively to the hidden silenc...
JOHN O'DONOHUE In yourself right now is all the place you've got.
FLANNERY O'CONNOR [H]iding how you really feel and trying to make everyone happy doesn't make you nice, it just makes ...
JENNY O'CONNELL Laughter is wine for the soul - laughter soft, or loud and deep, tinged through with seriousness - t...
SEáN O'CASEY The truth does not change according to our ability to stomach it.
FLANNERY O'CONNOR If you live today, you breath in nihilism ... it's the gas you breathe. If I hadn't had the Church t...
FLANNERY O'CONNOR I think it is safe to say that while the South is hardly Christ-centered, it is most certainly Chris...
FLANNERY O'CONNOR We are the music makers, and we are the dreamers of dreams.
ARTHUR O'SHAUGHNESSY You couldn't relive your life, skipping the awful parts, without losing what made it worthwhile. You...
STEWART O'NAN All the world's a stage and most of us are desperately unrehearsed.
SEáN O'CASEY Gabrielle chuckled, her dark eyes twinkling. “So he’s been after you, has he? Poor Etta, pursued...
MICHELLE O'LEARY She paused and saw him tense in expectation. He wouldn’t like to hear this, but better from her th...
MICHELLE O'LEARY I’m not bipolar, I’ve just had a bipolar life foisted upon me.
DANIEL O'MALLEY Accepting oneself does not preclude an attempt to become better.
FLANNERY O'CONNOR Each of us is an artist of our days; the greater our integrity and awareness, the more original and ...
JOHN O'DONOHUE They are all innocent until proven guilty. But not me. I am a liar until I am proven honest.
LOUISE O'NEILL I found him perhaps the least terrifying man I've ever met in the theater—because at first glance ...
PETER O'TOOLE Happiness arises from getting what you want, and this comes and goes. Joy arises from being with wha...
MARY O'MALLEY It's not the face, but the expressions on it. It's not the voice but the things you say. It's not th...
IAN O'SHEA You couldn’t relive your life, skipping the awful parts, without losing what made it worthwhile. Y...
STEWART O'NAN They should."

"Should be like a wood bee," she said.

It was a private joke, a ...
STEWART O'NAN The happiest she'd ever been was with him, and the saddest. Was that the true test of love?
STEWART O'NAN Everywhere I go I'm asked if I think the university stifles writers. My opinion is that they don't s...
FLANNERY O'CONNOR Mrs. Hopewell had no bad qualities of her own but she was able to use other people's in such a const...
FLANNERY O'CONNOR People give you a hard time about being a kid at twelve. They didn't want to give you Halloween cand...
HEATHER O'NEILL Everybody wants to save the Earth; nobody wants to help Mom do the dishes.
P.J. O'ROURKE Don't stand unmoving outside the door of a crying baby whose only desire is to touch you. Go to your...
PEGGY O'MARA Marry for love. But also choose to marry a man or woman who you love that treats you with the ultima...
JULIEANNE O'CONNOR There will be a time when love is beautiful and passionate and nothing else will exist but you and t...
JULIEANNE O'CONNOR Where you come from is gone, where you thought you were going to was never there, and where you are ...
FLANNERY O'CONNOR Once the soul awakens, the search begins and you can never go back. From then on, you are inflamed w...
JOHN O'DONOHUE [I suspect] that in the drive toward the liberal universalist notion of human rights that characteri...
DARREN O'DONNELL All the possibilities of your human destiny are asleep in your soul. You are here to realize and hon...
JOHN O'DONOHUE If you are different from the rest of the flock, they bite you
VINCENT O'SULLIVAN We do not need to grieve for the dead. Why should we grieve for them? They are now in a place where ...
JOHN O'DONOHUE To love without ownership, to love with total trust and faith in that very love, to love with the sa...
JULIEANNE O'CONNOR My feeling on the subject of sex with a man is - don't give it up unless you're willing to give him ...
JULIEANNE O'CONNOR Life is surreal. When you step back and really take a look at it, the irony is absolute.
JULIEANNE O'CONNOR Ladies, you have a ton of power if you just understand the fundamental differences between men and w...
JULIEANNE O'CONNOR When it was dark, you always carried the sun in your hand for me.
SEáN O'CASEY You cannot borrow half of who you are from someone else, yet people try to do it all of the time, th...
JENNIFER O'NEILL For Equilibrium, a Blessing:
Like the joy of the sea coming home to shore,
May the relief ...
JOHN O'DONOHUE Sometimes, when people speak, I cease listening to their words and zoom in instead on the cadence, a...
ROSIE O'DONNELL It was a great mistake, my being born a man, I would have been much more successful as a seagull or ...
EUGENE O'NEILL It could be a meeting on the street, or a party or a lecture, or just a simple, banal introduction, ...
JOHN O'DONOHUE The world rests in the night. Trees, mountains, fields, and faces are released from the prison of sh...
JOHN O'DONOHUE Your noble friend will not accept pretension but will gently and very firmly confront you with your ...
JOHN O'DONOHUE The ego is the false self-born out of fear and defensiveness.
JOHN O'DONOHUE If you try to view yourself through the lenses that others offer you, all you will see are distortio...
JOHN O'DONOHUE Love allows understanding to dawn, and understanding is precious. Where you are understood, you are ...
JOHN O'DONOHUE We do not need to go out and find love; rather, we need to be still and let love discover us.
JOHN O'DONOHUE Beauty is the illumination of your soul.
JOHN O'DONOHUE Real friendship or love is not manufactured or achieved by an act of will or intention. Friendship i...
JOHN O'DONOHUE When love awakens in your life, in the night of your heart, it is like the dawn breaking within you....
JOHN O'DONOHUE No one else has access to the world you carry around within yourself; you are its custodian and entr...
JOHN O'DONOHUE Your beloved and your friends were once strangers. Somehow at a particular time, they came from the ...
JOHN O'DONOHUE Your soul knows the geography of your destiny. Your soul alone has the map of your future, therefore...
JOHN O'DONOHUE If you send out goodness from yourself, or if you share that which is happy or good within you, it w...
JOHN O'DONOHUE Every friendship travels at sometime through the black valley of despair. This tests every aspect of...
JOHN O'DONOHUE All you can ever achieve is a sense of your soul. You gain little glimpses of its light, colors, and...
JOHN O'DONOHUE You are as young as you feel. If you begin to feel the warmth of your soul, there will be a youthful...
JOHN O'DONOHUE Behind your image, below your words, above your thoughts, the silence of another world waits.
JOHN O'DONOHUE