Tim O'Brien Quotes

History is often the tale of small moments—chance encounters or casual decisions or sheer coincidence—that seem of little consequence at the time, but somehow fuse with other small moments to produce something momentous, the proverbial flapping of a butterfly’s wings that triggers a hurricane.

It is remarkable how a seemingly insignificant action or event can change entire lives.

How strange a thing like that happens to a man. He dabbles in something and does not realise that it is his life.

I wouldn't change a single thing, because one change alters every moment that follows it.

Significant consequences can begin very inconsequentially. That's one thing that fascinates me. The other thing that fascinates me is how accident can undermine something that's unfolding, something that might have played out differently otherwise.

I was a science student and was aiming to be an IFS officer. But, fortunately, my destiny had some other plans for me.

I've always been drawn to the idea that small choices in our lives could have drastic effects on our future.

He picked up the letter Q and hurled it into a distant privet bush where it hit a young rabbit. The rabbit hurtled off in terror and didn’t stop till it was set upon and eaten by a fox which choked on one of its bones and died on the bank of a stream which subsequently washed it away. During the following weeks Ford Perfect swallowed his pride and struck up a relationship with a girl who had been a personnel officer on Golgafrincham, and he was terribly upset when she suddenly passed away as a result of drinking water from a pool that had been polluted by the body of a dead fox.

I thought about how one tiny decision can change a life. A decision that takes only a split second to make.

By your hand, millions - billions - of lives will be altered, caught up in a chain of events begun by you this day.

There are so many things where I realize, like, simple circumstance, like the simple choice that I made one night to not do that and to do this, one night could have changed everything.

A single action can cause a life to veer off in a direction it was never meant to go.

I truly, truly believe that I was going in that direction and all of a sudden fate took me and put me here. It's like something else has other plans for me.

Sometimes when I consider what tremendous consequences come from little things, I am tempted to think there are no little things.

The least movement is of importance to all nature. The entire ocean is affected by a pebble.

Nothing happens in a vacuum in life: every action has a series of consequences, and sometimes it takes a long time to fully understand the consequences of our actions.

You never know when you are doing something that is affecting someone.

For me, everything has always been an accident.

Every cause produces more than one effect.

There's no limit to how complicated things can get, on account of one thing always leading to another.

We know there are poets who are chosen: by what or whom, we no more know than what lies beyond our final breath, or what caused a certain action which resulted in the fulfillment or the desecration and collapse of what we most cared for in life.

Everything we do, even the slightest thing we do, can have a ripple effect and repercussions that emanate. If you throw a pebble into the water on one side of the ocean, it can create a tidal wave on the other side.

… tryst with destiny.

Unintended Consequences

In the economic sphere an act, a habit, an institution, a law produces not only one effect, but a series of effects. Of these effects, the first alone is immediate; it appears simultaneously with its cause; it is seen. The other effects emerge only subsequently; they are not seen; we are fortunate if we force them.