A Quote by Tim O'Brien
Most of the things in 'The Things They Carried' didn't happen to me. Ninety-five percent of it's invented. It's not what occurred.
Related Quotes
I use things, I steal things from my life when I want to, when I need to, or when it seems appropriate. But most of the stuff in my novels is entirely invented, ninety-five percent. And even when I do borrow something, it becomes fictionalized.
It's my special magical power. I can read your mind when you're thinking dirty thoughts." "So, ninety-five percent of the time." She craned her head back to look up at him. "Ninety-five percent? What's the other five percent?" "Oh, you know, the usual--demons I might kill, runes I need to learn, people who've annoyed me recently, people who've annoyed me not so recently, ducks." "Ducks?
The Ninety-Ninety Rule of Project Schedules - the first ninety percent of the task takes ninety percent of the time, and the last ten percent takes the other ninety percent.
I think that the ideal of men's physiques in general, gay or straight, is one of the most under-talked-about things ever. Ninety-five percent of these bodies that we're seeing, that we're striving so hard to look like, are genetically engineered - like, let's be very clear.
The big thing is that we have five percent or less of the hardcore players actively entertaining the other ninety-five percent.
All your life people will tell you things. And most of the time, probably ninety-five percent of the time, what they'll tell you will be wrong.
Ninety-five percent of people who walk the earth are simply inert. One percent are saints, and one percent are assholes. The other three percent are people who do what they say they can do.
At a Dodger baseball game in Los Angeles, I asked Will Durant if he was ninety-four or ninety-five. "Ninety-four," he said. "You don't think I'd be doing anything as foolish as this if I were ninety-five, do you?"
Ninety-nine percent of everyday things are things we don't need - that goes for regular visits to the hairdresser just as it does for clothing. What would it mean if we all consumed 20 percent less? It would be catastrophic. It would mean 20 percent less jobs, 20 percent less taxes, 20 percent less money for schools, doctors, roads. The global economy would collapse.
If you're ninety-five percent of the way to outstanding success, doesn't it make sense to go the additional five percent of the way? ... A marathon which takes hours to run, can be won or lost by a matter of seconds.
Persistence isn't very glamorous. If genius is one percent inspiration and ninety-nine percent perspiration, then as a culture we tend to lionize the one percent. We love its flash and dazzle. But great power lies in the other ninety-nine percent.
For the three decades after WWII, incomes grew at about 3 percent a year for people up and down the income ladder, but since then most income growth has occurred among the top quintile. And among that group, most of the income growth has occurred among the top 5 percent. The pattern repeats itself all the way up. Most of the growth among the top 5 percent has been among the top 1 percent, and most of the growth among that group has been among the top one-tenth of one percent.
Ninety to ninety-five percent of people will withdraw to the comfort zone when what they try doesn't work. Only that small percentage, 5 or 10 percent, will continually improve themselves; they will continually push themselves out into the zone of discomfort, and these are always the highest performers in every field.
Ninety-five percent of women's experiences are about being a victim. Or about being an underdog, or having to survive... women didn't go to Vietnam and blow things up. They are not Rambo.
Ninety percent of the time things turn out worse than you thought they would. The other ten percent of the time you had no right to expect that much.
The notion that anything can be invented wholly and that these invented things are classified as 'fiction' and that other writing, presumably not made up, is called 'nonfiction' strikes me as a very arbitrary separation of things.
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