The wars don't end when you sign peace treaties or when the years go by. They will echo on until I'm gone and all the widows and orphans are gone.
Tim O'BrienRead
...his love was too much for him, he felt paralyzed, he wanted to sleep inside her lungs and breathe her blood and be smothered.
Interpretation
What this quote means
The quote expresses an overwhelming and consuming desire for deep intimacy and connection.
In this quote, Tim O'Brien captures the intense and often overwhelming nature of love, depicting it as an all-encompassing force that can leave one feeling paradoxically both alive and immobilized. The vivid imagery suggests a longing for such closeness that it transcends physical boundaries, indicating that true love can invoke feelings of vulnerability and a desire for total union with the beloved.
Themes
LoveIntimacyDesireConnectionOverwhelm
In practice
Example use cases
This quote can be used in a romantic speech to express deep feelings for a partner.
More from Tim O'Brien
All quotes →...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'BrienRead
Unlike Chicago or New York, small-town Minnesota did not allow a man's failings to disappear beneath a veil of numbers. People talked. Secrets did not stay secret.
Tim O'BrienRead
Place is so important to me. The Midwest is like a ghost in my life. It's present as I look out the window now. I see Texas, but if I close my eyes and look out the same window, I'm back in my hometown in Worthington, Minnesota, and I cherish those values and that diction.
Tim O'BrienRead
In fiction workshops, we tend to focus on matters of verisimilitude largely because such issues are so much easier to talk about than the failure of imagination.
Tim O'BrienRead
War is a fundamental aspect of human existence. It's good to know what war entails and what the human sacrifice is.
Tim O'BrienRead
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