Brock > Brock's Quotes

“Much unhappiness has come into the world because of bewilderment and things left unsaid.”
― Fyodor Dostoevsky

“A thing may happen and be a total lie; another thing may not happen and be truer than the truth.”
― Tim O'Brien, The Things They Carried

“A true war story is never moral. It does not instruct, nor encourage virtue, nor suggest models of proper human behavior, nor restrain men from doing the things men have always done. If a story seems moral, do not believe it. If at the end of a war story you feel uplifted, or if you feel that some small bit of rectitude has been salvaged from the larger waste, then you have been made the victim of a very old and terrible lie. There is no rectitude whatsoever. There is no virtue. As a first rule of thumb, therefore, you can tell a true war story by its absolute and uncompromising allegiance to obscenity and evil.”
― Tim O'Brien, The Things They Carried

“Fiction is the lie that helps us understand the truth.”
― Tim O'Brien

“Write drunk; edit sober.”
― Peter De Vries, Reuben, Reuben

“What people believe is a measure of what they suffer.”
― Peter De Vries, The Blood of the Lamb

“It is the final proof of God's omnipotence that he need not exist in order to save us.”
― Peter De Vries

“We are not primarily put on this earth to see through one another, but to see one another through. ”
― Peter De Vries

“Go where your best prayers take you.”
― Frederick Buechner

“The grace of God means something like: Here is your life. You might never have been, but you are because the party wouldn't have been complete without you.”
― Frederick Buechner