Tim O'Brien Quotes

A man's subconscious self is not the ideal companion. It lurks for the greater part of his life in some dark den of its own, hidden away, and emerges only to taunt and deride and increase the misery of a miserable hour.

My soul is dark with stormy riot: directly traced over to diet.

Everyone is battling something emotional behind closed doors - that's life.

Man survives earthquakes, epidemics, the horrors of disease, and all the agonies of the soul, but for all time his tormenting tragedy is, and will be, the tragedy of the bedroom.

Secrets tear you apart.

We are only troubled by the fears which we, and not nature, give ourselves, for they add to the state in which we are the passions of the state in which we are not.

Not treasured wealth, nor the consul's lictor, can dispel the mind's bitter conflicts and the cares that flit, like bats, about your fretted roofs.

All the trials we endure cannot be compared to these interior battles.

Our bodies are but the anvils of pain and disease and our minds the hives of unnumbered cares.

Why does tragedy exist? Because you are full of rage. Why are you full of rage? Because you are full of grief.

Thoughts, like old vultures, prey upon their heart-strings

Guilt is the most destructive of all emotions. It mourns what has been while playing no part in what may be, now or in the future.

I've not been right for any man or myself since I met you.

The dramatic sufferings of adults and all the cruel fantasies of those of my own age, who seemed abandoned to their own impulses in the midst of so many catastrophes, appeared to inscribe themselves on the walls around me.

My writer friends, and they are legion, do not go around beaming with quiet feelings of contentment. Most of them go around with haunted, abused, surprised looks on their faces, like lab dogs on whom very personal deodorant sprays have been tested.

In my Lucia's absence Life hangs upon me, and becomes a burden; I am ten times undone, while hope, and fear, And grief, and rage and love rise up at once, And with variety of pain distract me.

There are periods of despondency and suffering which take possession of me. But I don't want anything but my own way. That is wanting a good deal, of course, when you have to trample upon the lives, the hearts, the prejudices of others-

Anxiety is the poison of human life; the parent of many sins and of more miseries.

...two thirds of all sorrow is homemade and, so far as the universe is concerned, unnecessary.

Things you believe are baggage in your life.

I love characters that are going through turmoil. To be honest, I love characters with conflict. I love characters who are really going through an emotional journey; whether it's a super-dark-crazy journey or a really relatable guy.

The subject of pain is the business I am in - to give meaning and shape to frustration and suffering. The existence of pain cannot be denied. I propose no remedies or excuses.

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 shameful memories. They carried the common secret of cowardice.... Men killed, and died, because they were embarrassed not to.

One thing you can't hide - is when you're crippled inside.