“Imagination, like reality, has its limits.”
― Tim O'Brien, quote from Going After Cacciato
“It is easy, of course, to fear happiness. There is often complacency in the acceptance of misery. We fear parting from our familiar roles. We fear the consequences of such a parting. We fear happiness because we fear failure. But we must overcome these fears. We must be brave. It is one thing to speculate about what might be. It is quite another to act in behalf of our dreams, to treat them as objectives that are achievable and worth achieving. It is one thing to run from unhappiness; it is another to take action to realize those qualities of dignity and well-being that are the true standards of the human spirit.”
― Tim O'Brien, quote from Going After Cacciato
“A miracle to confound natural law, a baffling reversal of the inevitable consequences . . . a miracle. . . . An act of high imagination -- daring and lurid and impossible. Yes, a cartoon of the mind.”
― Tim O'Brien, quote from Going After Cacciato
“What happened, and what might have happened?”
― Tim O'Brien, quote from Going After Cacciato
“Peace never bragged. If you didn't look for it, it wasn't there.”
― Tim O'Brien, quote from Going After Cacciato
“And now it is time for a final act of courage. I urge you: March proudly into your own dream.”
― Tim O'Brien, quote from Going After Cacciato
“He showed me how...See, he says he's going up through Laos, then into Burma, and then some other country, I forget, and then India and Iran and Turkey, and then Greece, and the rest is easy. That's what he said. The rest is easy, he said.”
― Tim O'Brien, quote from Going After Cacciato
“He thought about the difference between good times and bad times, and how funny it was that he could not state the difference, only feel it.”
― Tim O'Brien, quote from Going After Cacciato
“In battle, in a war, a soldier sees only a tiny fragment of what is available to be seen. The soldier is not a photographic machine. He is not a camera. He registers, so to speak, only those few items that he is predisposed to register and not a single thing more. Do you understand this? So I am saying to you that after a battle each soldier will have different stories to tell, vastly different stories, and that when a was is ended it is as if there have been a million wars, or as many wars as there were soldiers.”
― Tim O'Brien, quote from Going After Cacciato
“A few names were known in full, some in part, some not at all. No one cared. Except in clearly unreasonable cases, a soldier was generally called by the name he preferred, or by what he called himself, and no great effort was made to disentangle Christian names from surnames from nicknames.”
― Tim O'Brien, quote from Going After Cacciato
“He believed in mission. But . . . he did not believe in it as an intellectual imperative, or even as a professional standard. Mission . . . was an abstract notion that took meaning in concrete situations.”
― Tim O'Brien, quote from Going After Cacciato
“Money was never a problem, passports were never required. There were always new places to dance.”
― Tim O'Brien, quote from Going After Cacciato
“Yes,” she said, “television is one of those unique products of the American genius. A means of keeping a complex country intact. Just as America begins to explode every which way, riches and opportunity and complexity, just then along comes the TV to bring it all together. Rich and poor, black and white—they share the same heroes, Matt Dillon and Paladin. In January the talk is of Superbowl. In October, baseball. Say what you will, but only Americans could so skillfully build instant bridges among the classes, bind together diversity.”
― Tim O'Brien, quote from Going After Cacciato
Tim O'Brien
Born place: in Minnesota, The United States
Born date October 1, 1946
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“This love was a torment, and he resented bitterly the subjugation in which it held him; he was a prisoner and he longed for freedom.
Sometimes he awoke in the morning and felt nothing; his soul leaped, for he thought he was free; he loved no longer; but in a little while, as he grew wide awake, the pain settled in his heart, and he knew that he was not cured yet.”
― W. Somerset Maugham, quote from Of Human Bondage
“Musical innovation is full of danger to the State, for when modes of music change, the fundamental laws of the State always change with them.”
― Plato, quote from The Republic
“He could not forget the touch of her arms around his neck, impatiently felt as it had been at the time; but now the recollection of her clinging defence of him, seemed to thrill him through and through,—to melt away every resolution, all power of self-control, as if it were wax before a fire.”
― Elizabeth Gaskell, quote from North and South
“Do you think I’m pretty?” I heard myself ask.
Something I couldn’t name flashed across his face.
“No. I don’t think you’re pretty. I think you’re the most beautiful girl I’ve ever seen.”
― Jeaniene Frost, quote from Halfway to the Grave
“There is nothing either good or bad, but thinking makes it so.”
― William Shakespeare, quote from Hamlet
Sprig Muslin
The Lost TwinBookQuoters is a community of passionate readers who enjoy sharing the most meaningful, memorable and interesting quotes from great books. As the world communicates more and more via texts, memes and sound bytes, short but profound quotes from books have become more relevant and important. For some of us a quote becomes a mantra, a goal or a philosophy by which we live. For all of us, quotes are a great way to remember a book and to carry with us the author’s best ideas.
We thoughtfully gather quotes from our favorite books, both classic and current, and choose the ones that are most thought-provoking. Each quote represents a book that is interesting, well written and has potential to enhance the reader’s life. We also accept submissions from our visitors and will select the quotes we feel are most appealing to the BookQuoters community.
Founded in 2023, BookQuoters has quickly become a large and vibrant community of people who share an affinity for books. Books are seen by some as a throwback to a previous world; conversely, gleaning the main ideas of a book via a quote or a quick summary is typical of the Information Age but is a habit disdained by some diehard readers. We feel that we have the best of both worlds at BookQuoters; we read books cover-to-cover but offer you some of the highlights. We hope you’ll join us.
