Tim O'Brien Quotes

War isn't just about bravery and courage and jingoism and patriotism. It's also fundamentally about grief. And the people that go and do the fighting and the dying are never the people who actually benefit from the fighting and the dying.

Wars are detested by mothers.

A professional soldier understands that war means killing people, war means maiming people, war means families left without fathers and mothers.

My subject is War, and the pity of War. The Poetry is in the pity.

I have been through one war. I have seen the dead piled up and I do not want to see another.

Tomorrow the war will start, There will be widows. There will be orphans. Who knows what tomorrow will bring.

War violates the order of nature and causes parents to bury their children.

A professional soldier understands that war means killing people, war means maiming people, war means families left without fathers and mothers. All you have to do is hold your first dying soldier in your arms, and have that terribly futile feeling that his life is flowing out and you can’t do anything about it. Then you understand the horror of war.

War is very sad and small life is pathetically fragile at times.

Bones inside clothes. That was war to me.

In peace, sons bury their fathers. In war, fathers bury their sons.

Misery, mutilation, destruction, terror, starvation and death characterize the process of war and form a principal part of the product.

Wars have never hurt anybody except the people who die.

The disasters of war can be infinitely eerie and poignant.

Wars break things; they break stories.

The War will leave none of us as it found us.

War is hell. Hollywood fantasizes about it and makes it look good... war sucks.

There's nothing glamorous about war at all.

There is nothing glamorous or romantic about war. It's mostly about random pointless death and misery.

Unfortunately, in war, there are casualties, including among the civilian population.

War is never cheap or easy.

Things don’t go well in war. You make mistakes.

In every war, innocent people die.

War tore my family apart.

There's nothing glorious about war. There's nothing glorious about holding your friends in your arms and watching them die. There's nothing glorious about having to leave your home for 6 to 8 months while your family's back here and you're away.