Quotes from "The Things They Carried" by Tim O, Brien

The book "The Things They Carried" was written by author and Vietnam War veteran Tim O' Brien in 1990.This book is fiction but is based on many of his real experiences as a soldier. Below are quotes that I believe to be memorable and relevant to our CAP. This was an excellent book and I am glad I read it. I highly recommend it.
-Jessica Miles


Page 20,Chapter: "The Things They Carried"

"When someone died, it wasn't quite dying, because in a curious way it seemed scripted, and because they had their lines mostly memorized, irony mixed with tragedy, and because they called it by other names, as if to encyst and destroy the reality of death itself."


Page 44,Chapter: "On The Rainy River"

"I was afraid of walking away from my own life, my friends and my family, my whole history, everything that mattered to me. I feared losing the respect of my parents.I feared the law. I feared ridicule and censure."

Page 80,Chapter: "How To Tell A True War Story"

"How do you generalize? War is hell,but thats not the half of it,because war is also mystery and terror and adventure and courage and discovery and holiness and pity and despair and longing and love. War is nasty; war is fun. War is thrilling;war is drudgery. War makes you a man;war makes you dead."

Page 81,Chapter: "How To Tell A True War Story"

"To generalize about war is like generalizing about peace. Almost everything is true. Almost nothing is true."


Page 82,Chapter: "How To Tell A True War Story"

"For the common soldier, at least, war has a feel-the spiritual texture- of a great ghostly fog,thick and permanent. There is no clarity. everything swirls. The old rules are no longer true. Right spills over into wrong. Order blend into chaos,love into hate,ugliness into beauty, law into anarchy, civility into savagery. The vapors suck you in. You can't tell where you are,or why your there, and the only certainty is overwhelming ambiguity. "


Page 179,Chapter: "Good Form"

"I did not kill him. But I was present you see, and my presence was guilt enough."


Page 179, Chapter: "Good Form"

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

Page 225, Chapter: "The Lives of the Dead"

"But in a story, which is kind of dreaming, the dead sometimes smile and sit up and return to the world."