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
And as a writer now, I want to save Linda's life. Not her body--her life.
Interpretation
What this quote means
The quote expresses a writer's desire to capture the essence of a person's life rather than just their physical existence.
In this quote, Tim O'Brien emphasizes the profound role of a writer in preserving the true value of a person's experiences and emotions. He suggests that narrative and storytelling can immortalize someone's spirit and identity, going beyond mere physicality to explore the depth of human life and its complexities. This reflects the transformative power of writing, which can give a voice to the stories and emotions that define a person.
Themes
WritingStorytellingLifePreservationImportance
In practice
Example use cases
In a writing workshop, to inspire participants to delve deeper into their characters.
More from Tim O'Brien
All quotes β...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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Interesting thing, these fellows never seem to get the idea of perspective-' The Bursar thought, or received the thought: that's because perspective is a lie. If I know a pond is round then why should I draw it oval? I will draw it round because round is true. Why should my brush lie to you just because my eye lies to me?
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Architecture is a very dangerous job. If a writer makes a bad book, eh, people don't read it. But if you make bad architecture, you impose ugliness on a place for a hundred years.
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The process is the most beautiful part.
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