It's not just the embarrassment of tears. That's part of it, no doubt, but what embarrasses me much … - Tim O'Brien

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When obedience is in the ascendant, He will tax the remotest star and the last grain of sand to assist you with all His Almighty power.

Tim O'Brien

It's not just the embarrassment of tears. That's part of it, no doubt, but what embarrasses me much more, and always will, is the paralysis that took my heart. A moral freeze: I couldn't decide, I couldn't act, I couldn't comport myself with even a pretense of modest human dignity.

Act, Dignity, Doubt, Heart, Tears

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