They carried all the emotional baggage of men who might die. Grief, terror, love, longing--these were intangibles, but … - Tim O'Brien

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It's not what you see that is art. Art is the gap.

Tim O'Brien

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.

Emotional, Gravity, Grief, Killed, Memories, Men

Same Author Quotes

It was my view then, and still is, that you don't make war without knowing why. 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.

Knowing, Mistake, Reasonable, View, War

By telling stories, you objectify your own experience. You separate it from yourself. You pin down certain truths. You make up others. You start sometimes with an incident that truly happened, and you carry it forward by inventing incidents that did not in fact occur but that nonetheless help to clarify and explain.

Facts, Help, Helping, Objectify, Pin, Stories

Fiction is the lie that helps us understand the truth.

Fiction, Helping, Helps, Lie, Lying, Understand

What sticks to memory, often, are those odd little fragments that have no beginning and no end.

Fragments, Littles, Memories, Odd, Sticks

I want you to feel what I felt. I want you to know why story-truth is truer sometimes than happening-truth.

Felt, Know, Sometimes, Stories, Truer, Want