Truth Quote by Tim O'Brien — Inspiring Words on Life, Love & Wisdom

“A lie, sometimes, can be truer than the truth, which is why fiction gets written.”

“Well, right now I'm not dead. But when I am, it's like...I don't know, I guess it's like being inside a book that nobody's reading. [...] An old one. It's up on a library shelf, so you're safe and everything, but the book hasn't been checked out for a long, long time. All you can do is wait. Just hope somebody'll pick it up and start reading.”

“That's what fiction is for. It's for getting at the truth when the truth isn't sufficient for the truth.”

“A thing may happen and be a total lie; another thing may not happen and be truer than the truth.”

“If you don’t care for obscenity, you don’t care for the truth; if you don’t care for the truth, watch how you vote.”

“It’s a hard thing to explain to somebody who hasn’t felt it, but the presence of death and danger has a way of bringing you fully awake. It makes things vivid. When you’re afraid, really afraid, you see things you never saw before, you pay attention to the world. You make close friends. You become part of a tribe and you share the same blood- you give it together, you take it together.”

“People resist a census, but give them a profile page and they'll spend all day telling you who they are.”

“Every time you mistreat someone, you reveal the part of you that lacks love and needs to heal.”

“If today is not your day,”

“Death, taxes and childbirth! There's never any convenient time for any of them.”

“If we don’t honor our truth, how can we expect anyone else to do so?”

“A corner is important. It provides privacy and an anchor and lets you exist independently of the room.”