The Things They Carried Quotes

“But this too is true: stories can save us.”
― Tim O'Brien, The Things They Carried

“But in a story I can steal her soul.”
― Tim O'Brien, The Things They Carried

“he wanted to sleep inside her lungs and breathe her blood and be smothered. He wanted her to be a virgin and not a virgin all at once. He wanted to know her. Intimate secrets: Why poetry? Why so sad? Why that grayness in her eyes? Why so alone? Not lonely, just alone - riding her bike across campus or sitting off by herself in the cafeteria - even dancing, she danced alone - and it was the aloneness that filled him with love. He remembered telling her that one evening. How she nodded and looked away. And how, later, when he kissed her, she received the kiss without returning it, her eyes wide open, not afraid, not a virgin’s eyes, just flat and uninvolved.”
― Tim O'Brien, The Things They Carried

“You can't fix your mistakes. Once people are dead, you can't make them undead.”
― Tim O'Brien, The Things They Carried

“Stories are for eternity, when memory is erased, when there is nothing to remember except the story.”
― Tim O'Brien, The Things They Carried

“Stories can save us.”
― Tim O'Brien, The Things They Carried

“Each morning, despite the unknowns, they made their legs move.”
― Tim O'Brien, The Things They Carried

“Don't throw away luck on little stuff. Save it up.”
― Tim O'Brien, The Things They Carried

“He knew he would fall dead and wake up in the stories of his village and people”
― Tim O’Brien