Tim O'Brien

Quotes

• “They carried all they could bear, and then some, including a silent awe for the power of the things they carried.”
• “They were afraid of dying but even more afraid to show it.”
• “They carried all the emotional baggage of men who might die. Grief, terror, love, longing — these were intangibles, but the intangibles had their own mass and specific gravity, they had tangible weight.”
• “They carried the soldier's greatest fear, which was the fear of blushing. Men killed, and died, because they were embarrassed not to.”
• “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.”
• “I remember opening the letter, scanning the first few lines, feeling the blood go thick behind my eyes. I remember a sound in my head. It wasn't thinking, just a silent howl. A million things all at once — I was too good for this war. Too smart, too compassionate, too everything. It couldn't happen. I was above it.”

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