A Quote by Tim O'Brien

I'm skimming across the surface of my own history, moving fast, riding the melt beneath the blades, doing loops and spins, and when I take a high leap into the dark and come down thirty years later, I realize it is as Tim trying to save Timmy's life with a story.

Tim O'Brien

Quote Topics

Across Beneath Blades Come Dark Doing Down Fast High History Later Leap Life Loops Melt Moving My Own Own Realize Riding Save Skimming Story Surface Take Thirty Thirty Years Tim Trying Years

Quote Author

Tim O'Brien
American - Novelist
Born: October 1, 1946

I would like to mention some preparations that were required of me. The first preparation is to take a right attitude toward life. This means, stop being an escapist! Stop being a surface liver who stays right in the froth of the surface. There are millions of these people, and they never find anything really worthwhile. Be willing to face life squarely and get down beneath the surface of life where the verities and realities are to be found. That's what we are doing here now.

Peace Pilgrim

Life is not being sure what will come next or how it will come. We guess at everything we do. We take leap after leap in the dark and that's the joy of living and the beauty of faith. When we grow tired, when we sit still, that's when we begin to die.... One does not discover new lands without consenting to lose sight of the shore for a very long time.

Angela Elwell Hunt

Genres are like the surface of the ocean. There are waves and things moving, but you don't instantly see all the reefs and ecosystems that's happening beneath the surface.

Charlie Jane Anders

When we're in the story, when we're part of it, we can't know the outcome. It's only later that we think we can see what the story was. But do we ever really know? And does anybody else, perhaps, coming along a little later, does anybody else really care? ... History is written by the survivors, but what is that history? That's the point I was trying to make just now. We don't know what the story is when we're in it, and even after we tell it we're not sure. Because the story doesn't end.

James Robertson

As an artist, there's a sweet, jump-starting quality to [marijuana] for me. I've often felt telepathic and receptive to inexplicable messages my whole life. I can stave those off when I'm not high. When I'm high - well, they come in and there's less of a veil, so to speak. So if ever I need some clarity, or a quantum leap in my own consciousness, or a quantum leap in terms of writing something or getting an answer, it's a quick way for me to get it.

Alanis Morissette

I've been riding for 36 years. I started when I was 14-years-old. I was one of those crazy guys, riding wheelies up and down the streets, all the time. I love riding. It's in my blood.

Emilio Rivera

I, myself, have not infrequently come across recovering addicts years later that I had given up on. It is like seeing a ghost come to life. The transformations can be astonishing.

Drew Pinsky

As one looks across the barren stretches of the pack, it is sometimes difficult to realise what teeming life exists immediately beneath its surface.

Robert Falcon Scott

... It was the idea of facing a future skimming the surface of life, winging my way in and out of other people's crises, confusions, and passages, engaging them enough to get the story, but never enough to be indelibly touched by what I had seen or heard.

Anna Quindlen

Deep beneath the surface of the Sun, enormous forces were gathering. At any moment, the energies of a million hydrogen bombs might burst forth in the awesome explosion.... Climbing at millions of miles per hour, an invisible fireball many times the size of Earth would leap from the Sun and head out across space.

Arthur C. Clarke

There was no lifeboat here in these deep, killing waters, not even a lighthouse, marking the way back to shore with its soft amber promise. There was only the storm of Barrons and the one I seemed to be, and if there were dark shapes moving in the waters beneath my feet that I should probably take a good hard look at and possibly reconsider trying to swim here, I didn’t care.

Karen Marie Moning

It is hard to be with another's pain if we cannot be with our own. Since I was a child I have always felt a deep sense of responsibility to ease others' pain. But I have discovered that often, beneath this genuine and admirable desire, lies an inability to be with my own sorrow. Several years ago, watching a close friend suffer when a brain aneurysm took away her life as she knew it, I wrote in my journal, "I won't ask much. But if you would just let me save your life, perhaps it will not hurt so much to know I cannot save my own.

Oriah Dreamer

Some of my favorite music is incredibly repetitive, or on the surface has an element of repetition. But once you go beneath the surface, you realize in the repetition is constant variation.

John Dieterich

'Made' is about opening your heart to people who deserve your love and not trying to turn other people into something that they're not: not trying to save people who don't want to be saved. If you go down that dark path, you're not going to end up doing any good.

Jon Favreau

When kids want a picture or autograph, you reflect later on and realize you did something good. Then you see them come back five years later, they're all grown up, have their own lives and they tell you how much you inspired them. You're like, 'Whoa.'