“At night, when I couldn't sleep, I'd sometimes carry on silent arguments with those people. I'd be screaming at them, telling them how much I detested their blind, thoughtless, automatic acquiescence to it all, their simpleminded patriotism, their prideful ignorance, their love-it-or-leave it platitudes, how they were sending me off to fight a war they didn't understand and didn't want to understand.”

The Things They Carried (1990), On the Rainy River

Adopted from Wikiquote. Last update June 3, 2021. History

Help us to complete the source, original and additional information

Do you have more details about the quote "At night, when I couldn't sleep, I'd sometimes carry on silent arguments with those people. I'd be screaming at them, t…" by Tim O'Brien?
Tim O'Brien photo
Tim O'Brien 25
American novelist 1946

Related quotes

Harry Reid photo

“I said … unprepared, unscripted, that, "I know how to fight and I know how to dance, and I'd much rather dance than fight." ... What I didn't tell everybody was I was always a better fighter than dancer.”

Harry Reid (1939) American politician

Source: "Reid Says He's A Fighter Who'd Rather Dance", All Things Considered, NPR (18 May 2010) https://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=126905578

Rick Riordan photo

“I'd made water shoot out of the bathroom fixtures. I didn't understand how. But the toilets responded to me. I had become one with the plumbing.”

Variant: I didn't understand how. But the toilets had responded to me. I had become one with the plumbing...
Source: The Lightning Thief

Alice Sebold photo

“I knew I'd failed a test whose rules I didn't yet understand.”

Source: Breath (2008), Ch.18 - p.90

Deb Caletti photo
John Flanagan photo

“When people asked what I wanted to be, I'd tell them a writer. They were surprised or indifferent. If people don't read, what is a writer?”

Tomás Rivera (1935–1984) American academic

On his wanting to become a writer at an early age in " From Poverty to Power: The Inspiring Story of Tomas Rivera http://www.teenink.com/nonfiction/academic/article/778847/From-Poverty-to-Power-The-Inspiring-Story-of-Tomas-Rivera" (TeenInk)

Russell Crowe photo
John Barrowman photo

“I would love to lecture to women on men. I'd tell them everything about men: gay, straight, bi, how we're all the same, how we're all bastards.”

John Barrowman (1967) Scottish-American actor, singer, dancer, musical theatre performer, writer and television personality

What I know about men, Morwenna Ferrier, Sunday September 7 2008, Sunday September 7 2008, The Observer http://www.guardian.co.uk/theobserver/2008/sep/07/women.relationships1,

Related topics