But this too is true: stories can save us.


Tim O'Brien

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Tim O'Brien's book about Vietnam, 'The Things They Carried', has won every award, is...
DAVE EGGERS
…he wanted to sleep inside her lungs and breathe her blood and be smothered. He wanted her to be a...
TIM O'BRIEN
I played in a movie called Ring of Fear with Clyde Beatty and Pat O'Brien.
MICKEY SPILLANE
Theatre outings are my favourite thing to spend money on. The most influential play I saw was 'B...
DAWN FRENCH
That feeling is so intoxicating, walking off the court holding the Larry O'Brien trophy. So I ju...
STEPHEN CURRY
When I was in college, I wanted to write for 'Late Night With Conan O'Brien,' and I was ...
MIKE BIRBIGLIA
Even today I work with Niall O'Brien, who is far more technically astute than I am, but I still ...
SAM TAYLOR-JOHNSON
I have nothing against Dylan O'Brien! He's one of my favorite people. I have so much respect...
KATHERINE MCNAMARA
But Ma, I have the power to save her!"
-TIM
HUNTLEY FITZPATRICK
They did not submit to the obvious alternative, which was simply to close the eyes and fall. So easy...
TIM O'BRIEN
That's what fiction is for. It's for getting at the truth when the truth isn't sufficient for the tr...
TIM O'BRIEN
I guess we're really brothers, aren't we? Don't know what that means, except it means that some of t...
TIM O'BRIEN
you can tell a true war story if it embarrasses you. If you don't care for obscenity, you don't care...
TIM O'BRIEN
It’s a hard thing to explain to somebody who hasn’t felt it, but the presence of death and dange...
TIM O'BRIEN
...his love was too much for him, he felt paralyzed, he wanted to sleep inside her lungs and breathe...
TIM O'BRIEN
They carried all they could bear, and then some, including a silent awe for the terrible power of th...
TIM O'BRIEN
When a man died, there had to be blame. Jimmy Cross understood this. You could blame the war, You co...
TIM O'BRIEN
Words, too, have genuine substance -- mass and weight and specific gravity.
TIM O'BRIEN
We are fascinated, all of us, by the implacable otherness of others. And we wish to penetrate those ...
TIM O'BRIEN
It's sad when you learn you're not much of a hero.
TIM O'BRIEN
You don't know. When I'm out there at night I feel close to my own body, I can feel my blood moving,...
TIM O'BRIEN
They carried all the emotional baggage of men who might die. Grief, terror, love, longing--these wer...
TIM O'BRIEN
I was a coward. I went to the war.
TIM O'BRIEN
To generalize about war is like generalizing about peace. Almost everything is true. Almost nothing ...
TIM O'BRIEN
Linda was nine then, as I was, but we were in love...it had all the shadings and complexities of mat...
TIM O'BRIEN
Well, right now I'm not dead. But when I am, it's like...I don't know, I guess it's like bein...
TIM O'BRIEN
Together we understood what terror was: you're not human anymore. You're a shadow. You slip out of y...
TIM O'BRIEN
It wasn't a question of deceit. Just the opposite; he wanted to heat up the truth, to make it burn s...
TIM O'BRIEN
In any war story, but especially a true one, it's difficult to separate what happened from what seem...
TIM O'BRIEN
It was my view then, and still is, that you don't make war without knowing why. Knowledge of course,...
TIM O'BRIEN
He wished he could've explained some of this. How he had been braver than he ever thought possible, ...
TIM O'BRIEN
And sometimes remembering will lead to a story, which makes it forever. That's what stories are for....
TIM O'BRIEN
What sticks to memory, often, are those odd little fragments that have no beginning and no end...
TIM O'BRIEN
It was very sad, he thought. The things men carried inside. The things men did or felt they had to d...
TIM O'BRIEN
you're never more alive than when you're almost dead.
TIM O'BRIEN
But in a story, which is a kind of dreaming, the dead sometimes smile and sit up and return to the w...
TIM O'BRIEN
War is hell, but that's not the half of it, because war is also mystery and terror and adventure and...
TIM O'BRIEN
I survived, but it's not a happy ending.
TIM O'BRIEN
Stories are for joining the past to the future. Stories are for those late hours in the night when y...
TIM O'BRIEN
The thing about a story is that you dream it as you tell it, hoping that others might then dream alo...
TIM O'BRIEN
But the thing about remembering is that you don't forget.
TIM O'BRIEN
A true war story is never moral. It does not instruct, nor encourage virtue, nor suggest models of p...
TIM O'BRIEN
They carried the sky. The whole atmosphere, they carried it, the humidity, the monsoons, the stink o...
TIM O'BRIEN
A thing may happen and be a total lie; another thing may not happen and be truer than the truth.
TIM O'BRIEN
I want you to feel what I felt. I want you to know why story-truth is truer sometimes than happening...
TIM O'BRIEN
Do we choose sleep? Hell no and bullshit - we fall. We give ourselves over to possibility, to whim a...
TIM O'BRIEN
But the thing about remembering is that you don't forget. You take your material where you find it, ...
TIM O'BRIEN
A lie, sometimes, can be truer than the truth, which is why fiction gets written.
TIM O'BRIEN
Men killed, and died, because they were embarrassed not to.
TIM O'BRIEN
They would repair the leaks in their eyes.
TIM O'BRIEN
I suppose if we gain anything from this unsought experience it will be an appreciation for honesty- ...
TIM O'BRIEN
We are fascinated, all of us, by the implacable otherness of others. And we wish to penetrate by hyp...
TIM O'BRIEN
And in the end, of course, a true war story is never about war. It's about sunlight. It's about the ...
TIM O'BRIEN
What stories can do, I guess, is make things present.

I can look at things I never looked...
TIM O'BRIEN
Forty-three years old, and the war occurred half a lifetime ago, and yet the remembering makes it no...
TIM O'BRIEN
I'm skimming across the surface of my own history, moving fast, riding the melt beneath the blades, ...
TIM O'BRIEN
Even then, at nine years old, I wanted to live inside her body. I wanted to melt into her bones - TH...
TIM O'BRIEN
In many ways he was like America itself, big and strong, full of good intentions, a roll of fat jigg...
TIM O'BRIEN
But I do like churches. The way it feels inside. It feels good when you just sit there, like you're ...
TIM O'BRIEN
He does kiss like a pirate though, I was able to re-affirm that.
LORA LEIGH
2009 was crazy enough! I can't believe I worked with Jeremy Irons, Joan Allen, Marsha Mason, Cat...
AARON LAZAR
The next great decathlete is going to be a runner. I still feel that a Dan O'Brien, if he was a ...
CAITLYN JENNER
The public is eager for stories of True Cybercrime, and the media is happy to glamorize the subject....
CHARLES PLATT
What happens to you here is forever. Understand that in advance. We shall crush you down to the poin...
GEORGE ORWELL
Fiction should be in its way subversive. I don't think books should be neat or gentle or genteel or ...
EDNA O'BRIEN
It isn't always easy between us. I admit that. But it's right between us, always.
CARAGH M. O'BRIEN
Basically, I have no place in organized politics. By coming to the British Parliament, I've allo...
BERNADETTE DEVLIN
It wasn't long before people discovered the final horrors of letting an urchin into Parliament.
BERNADETTE DEVLIN
One American said that the most interesting thing about Holy Ireland was that its people hate each o...
BERNADETTE DEVLIN
To gain what is worth having, it may be necessary to lose everything else.
BERNADETTE DEVLIN
I guarantee you that the people who watch 'Conan O'Brien' or who watch 'Entertainmen...
JOHN TESH
The Sunday School teacher talked too much in the way our grade school teacher used to when she told ...
FRANCES FARMER
No lies, I thought, but lots of stories. True stories. True lies. Powerful stories, heroic tales, an...
DOROTHY ALLISON
When Edna O'Brien's first novel, 'The Country Girls,' was published in 1960, her fam...
ALAN CHEUSE
Mama tried to save us from the streets, but the streets were too strong.
BARRY WHITE
Books change us. Books save us. I know this because it happened to me. Books saved me. So, I do beli...
ELIF SAFAK
If you go back, including the Reynolds, I?m part of the Murphy?s, the McNally?s and the Cass. My sis...
BILL REYNOLDS
Symbolism is alright in 'fiction,' but I tell true life stories simply about what happened t...
JACK KEROUAC
The orb shone bright, but darkness had come to Eden and Carys didn’t know is there was any light t...
JOELLE CHARBONNEAU
Then they have the audacity to go shopping and pick out their own gifts. I want to know who the firs...
CHELSEA HANDLER
We could have been happy. I know that, and it is perhaps the hardest thing to know.
ALLY CONDIE
Sometimes I wonder how many others you're texting while you're texting me.
ABDUL'RAUF HASHMI
When boys get mad its not so bad
When girls get mad world WW3 is about to start!
P.C. CAST
NOTHING TO DO BUT ALWAYS BUSY
RIGAS
There’s nothing worse than not being wanted
JENNIFER PROBST
What she mostly wanted, he learned, was the same thing many people want--someone to notice she was t...
MITCH ALBOM
Epidemiologists study patterns in order to combat infection. Stories about epidemics follow patterns...
JILL LEPORE
I want this to succeed for Tim, because if it succeeds for Tim, it succeeds for us, because we'll be...
BETH SMITH
Thousands of individuals unknowingly contribute to the creation of our lives. Over the years, these ...
KRISTIN S. KAUFMAN
I used to say to my bubbe, 'Bubbe, is this story true?' And she'd say, 'Of course it...
PATRICIA POLACCO
Stories nurture our connection to place and to each other. They show us where we have been and where...
SUSAN J. TWEIT
There are monsters among us, it’s true. But there are heroes too.
AMIE KAUFMAN
A myth is a story that is "more than true." Many stories are true because one person, somewhere, at ...
LISA SEGER
What Glorious Virtues of Yours can I describe, O my True Guru?
SRI GURU GRANTH SAHIB
It's a Tim sandwich. The meat is fresh, but the bread is moldy.
DANIEL CRAIG
Writing is writing, and stories are stories. Perhaps the only true genres are fiction and non-fictio...
TANITH LEE
You never loved me, Farin. You never even said you liked me very much.
HEATHER O'BRIEN
Well, I'm not sure where this puts me, Sire. I mean, at least with the others I know what's expected...
AMIE O'BRIEN
Moderation, we find, is an extremely difficult thing to get in this country.
FLANN O'BRIEN
In our deepest moments we say the most inadequate things.
EDNA O'BRIEN

More Tim O'Brien

They did not submit to the obvious alternative, which was simply to close the eyes and fall. So easy...
TIM O'BRIEN
That's what fiction is for. It's for getting at the truth when the truth isn't sufficient for the tr...
TIM O'BRIEN
I guess we're really brothers, aren't we? Don't know what that means, except it means that some of t...
TIM O'BRIEN
you can tell a true war story if it embarrasses you. If you don't care for obscenity, you don't care...
TIM O'BRIEN
It’s a hard thing to explain to somebody who hasn’t felt it, but the presence of death and dange...
TIM O'BRIEN
...his love was too much for him, he felt paralyzed, he wanted to sleep inside her lungs and breathe...
TIM O'BRIEN
They carried all they could bear, and then some, including a silent awe for the terrible power of th...
TIM O'BRIEN
When a man died, there had to be blame. Jimmy Cross understood this. You could blame the war, You co...
TIM O'BRIEN
Words, too, have genuine substance -- mass and weight and specific gravity.
TIM O'BRIEN
We are fascinated, all of us, by the implacable otherness of others. And we wish to penetrate those ...
TIM O'BRIEN
It's sad when you learn you're not much of a hero.
TIM O'BRIEN
You don't know. When I'm out there at night I feel close to my own body, I can feel my blood moving,...
TIM O'BRIEN
They carried all the emotional baggage of men who might die. Grief, terror, love, longing--these wer...
TIM O'BRIEN
I was a coward. I went to the war.
TIM O'BRIEN
To generalize about war is like generalizing about peace. Almost everything is true. Almost nothing ...
TIM O'BRIEN
Linda was nine then, as I was, but we were in love...it had all the shadings and complexities of mat...
TIM O'BRIEN
Well, right now I'm not dead. But when I am, it's like...I don't know, I guess it's like bein...
TIM O'BRIEN
Together we understood what terror was: you're not human anymore. You're a shadow. You slip out of y...
TIM O'BRIEN
It wasn't a question of deceit. Just the opposite; he wanted to heat up the truth, to make it burn s...
TIM O'BRIEN
In any war story, but especially a true one, it's difficult to separate what happened from what seem...
TIM O'BRIEN
It was my view then, and still is, that you don't make war without knowing why. Knowledge of course,...
TIM O'BRIEN
He wished he could've explained some of this. How he had been braver than he ever thought possible, ...
TIM O'BRIEN
And sometimes remembering will lead to a story, which makes it forever. That's what stories are for....
TIM O'BRIEN
What sticks to memory, often, are those odd little fragments that have no beginning and no end...
TIM O'BRIEN
It was very sad, he thought. The things men carried inside. The things men did or felt they had to d...
TIM O'BRIEN
you're never more alive than when you're almost dead.
TIM O'BRIEN
But in a story, which is a kind of dreaming, the dead sometimes smile and sit up and return to the w...
TIM O'BRIEN
War is hell, but that's not the half of it, because war is also mystery and terror and adventure and...
TIM O'BRIEN
I survived, but it's not a happy ending.
TIM O'BRIEN
Stories are for joining the past to the future. Stories are for those late hours in the night when y...
TIM O'BRIEN
The thing about a story is that you dream it as you tell it, hoping that others might then dream alo...
TIM O'BRIEN
But the thing about remembering is that you don't forget.
TIM O'BRIEN
A true war story is never moral. It does not instruct, nor encourage virtue, nor suggest models of p...
TIM O'BRIEN
They carried the sky. The whole atmosphere, they carried it, the humidity, the monsoons, the stink o...
TIM O'BRIEN
A thing may happen and be a total lie; another thing may not happen and be truer than the truth.
TIM O'BRIEN
I want you to feel what I felt. I want you to know why story-truth is truer sometimes than happening...
TIM O'BRIEN
…he wanted to sleep inside her lungs and breathe her blood and be smothered. He wanted her to be a...
TIM O'BRIEN
Do we choose sleep? Hell no and bullshit - we fall. We give ourselves over to possibility, to whim a...
TIM O'BRIEN
But the thing about remembering is that you don't forget. You take your material where you find it, ...
TIM O'BRIEN
A lie, sometimes, can be truer than the truth, which is why fiction gets written.
TIM O'BRIEN
Men killed, and died, because they were embarrassed not to.
TIM O'BRIEN
They would repair the leaks in their eyes.
TIM O'BRIEN
I suppose if we gain anything from this unsought experience it will be an appreciation for honesty- ...
TIM O'BRIEN
We are fascinated, all of us, by the implacable otherness of others. And we wish to penetrate by hyp...
TIM O'BRIEN
And in the end, of course, a true war story is never about war. It's about sunlight. It's about the ...
TIM O'BRIEN
What stories can do, I guess, is make things present.

I can look at things I never looked...
TIM O'BRIEN
Forty-three years old, and the war occurred half a lifetime ago, and yet the remembering makes it no...
TIM O'BRIEN
I'm skimming across the surface of my own history, moving fast, riding the melt beneath the blades, ...
TIM O'BRIEN
Even then, at nine years old, I wanted to live inside her body. I wanted to melt into her bones - TH...
TIM O'BRIEN
In many ways he was like America itself, big and strong, full of good intentions, a roll of fat jigg...
TIM O'BRIEN
But I do like churches. The way it feels inside. It feels good when you just sit there, like you're ...
TIM O'BRIEN
You never loved me, Farin. You never even said you liked me very much.
HEATHER O'BRIEN
Well, I'm not sure where this puts me, Sire. I mean, at least with the others I know what's expected...
AMIE O'BRIEN
Moderation, we find, is an extremely difficult thing to get in this country.
FLANN O'BRIEN
In our deepest moments we say the most inadequate things.
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Darkness is drawn to light, but light does not know it; light must absorb the darkness and therefore...
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I would not hurt you, little man,' he said.

'I think that I got the disorder in Mullingar...
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My father...was a man who understood all dogs thoroughly and treated them like human beings.
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When all else fails, there's always delusion.
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A truly happy person is one who can enjoy the scenery on a detour.
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If Mr. Fantastic and Professor X had a baby, there would be tons of questions, but also it would be ...
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Yeah, I've only been acting since I was 18 out of high school.
DYLAN O'BRIEN
I don't really give much thought to the roles that I'd ideally love to play.
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My brother trolled recovery and support groups, searching for women with dependency issues, the way ...
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I have lived in this tree, in this same hollow," the owl said, "for more years than anyone can remem...
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Automobiles are unreliable and dangerous slaves. They frequently revolt and kill their masters. I ha...
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Would you have this?” the Protectorat hissed at his son.
Rafael's gaze narrowed in a slow ins...
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Even the worst feeling, with time and familiarity, became tolerable.
CARAGH M. O'BRIEN
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CARAGH M. O'BRIEN
Yet he saw that in all places there was originality, resulting from the human efforts at decoration ...
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Golosh Street is an interesting locality. All the oddities of trade seemed to have found their way t...
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FITZ-JAMES O'BRIEN
Dream hard. Work harder. Shine.
CARAGH M. O'BRIEN
Now I really have it all. I've been given some bullshit in my time, but that....
TIM O'ROURKE
The nice thing about twitter is the architecture of visibility. Email is invisible unless you reach ...
TIM O'REILLY
I am one and when I am one I am none, and when I am none I have won.
JULIEANNE O'CONNOR
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FLANNERY O'CONNOR
I suppose we all have our little hiding-hole if the truth was known, but as small as it is, the whol...
FRANK O'CONNOR
We are the music-makers,
And we are the dreamers of dreams,
Wandering by lone sea-breakers...
ARTHUR O'SHAUGHNESSY
Where I was born and where and how I have lived is unimportant. It is what I have done with where I ...
GEORGIA O'KEEFFE
Virtue should always be colmingled with humor.
PATRICK O'BRIAN
One of the tasks of true friendship is to listen compassionately and creatively to the hidden silenc...
JOHN O'DONOHUE
In yourself right now is all the place you've got.
FLANNERY O'CONNOR
[H]iding how you really feel and trying to make everyone happy doesn't make you nice, it just makes ...
JENNY O'CONNELL
Laughter is wine for the soul - laughter soft, or loud and deep, tinged through with seriousness - t...
SEáN O'CASEY
The truth does not change according to our ability to stomach it.
FLANNERY O'CONNOR
If you live today, you breath in nihilism ... it's the gas you breathe. If I hadn't had the Church t...
FLANNERY O'CONNOR
I think it is safe to say that while the South is hardly Christ-centered, it is most certainly Chris...
FLANNERY O'CONNOR
We are the music makers, and we are the dreamers of dreams.
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You couldn't relive your life, skipping the awful parts, without losing what made it worthwhile. You...
STEWART O'NAN
All the world's a stage and most of us are desperately unrehearsed.
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Gabrielle chuckled, her dark eyes twinkling. “So he’s been after you, has he? Poor Etta, pursued...
MICHELLE O'LEARY
She paused and saw him tense in expectation. He wouldn’t like to hear this, but better from her th...
MICHELLE O'LEARY
I’m not bipolar, I’ve just had a bipolar life foisted upon me.
DANIEL O'MALLEY
Accepting oneself does not preclude an attempt to become better.
FLANNERY O'CONNOR
Each of us is an artist of our days; the greater our integrity and awareness, the more original and ...
JOHN O'DONOHUE
They are all innocent until proven guilty. But not me. I am a liar until I am proven honest.
LOUISE O'NEILL
I found him perhaps the least terrifying man I've ever met in the theater—because at first glance ...
PETER O'TOOLE
Happiness arises from getting what you want, and this comes and goes. Joy arises from being with wha...
MARY O'MALLEY
It's not the face, but the expressions on it. It's not the voice but the things you say. It's not th...
IAN O'SHEA
You couldn’t relive your life, skipping the awful parts, without losing what made it worthwhile. Y...
STEWART O'NAN
They should."

"Should be like a wood bee," she said.

It was a private joke, a ...
STEWART O'NAN
The happiest she'd ever been was with him, and the saddest. Was that the true test of love?
STEWART O'NAN
Everywhere I go I'm asked if I think the university stifles writers. My opinion is that they don't s...
FLANNERY O'CONNOR
Mrs. Hopewell had no bad qualities of her own but she was able to use other people's in such a const...
FLANNERY O'CONNOR
People give you a hard time about being a kid at twelve. They didn't want to give you Halloween cand...
HEATHER O'NEILL
Everybody wants to save the Earth; nobody wants to help Mom do the dishes.
P.J. O'ROURKE
Don't stand unmoving outside the door of a crying baby whose only desire is to touch you. Go to your...
PEGGY O'MARA
Marry for love. But also choose to marry a man or woman who you love that treats you with the ultima...
JULIEANNE O'CONNOR
There will be a time when love is beautiful and passionate and nothing else will exist but you and t...
JULIEANNE O'CONNOR
Where you come from is gone, where you thought you were going to was never there, and where you are ...
FLANNERY O'CONNOR
Once the soul awakens, the search begins and you can never go back. From then on, you are inflamed w...
JOHN O'DONOHUE
[I suspect] that in the drive toward the liberal universalist notion of human rights that characteri...
DARREN O'DONNELL
All the possibilities of your human destiny are asleep in your soul. You are here to realize and hon...
JOHN O'DONOHUE
If you are different from the rest of the flock, they bite you
VINCENT O'SULLIVAN
We do not need to grieve for the dead. Why should we grieve for them? They are now in a place where ...
JOHN O'DONOHUE
To love without ownership, to love with total trust and faith in that very love, to love with the sa...
JULIEANNE O'CONNOR
My feeling on the subject of sex with a man is - don't give it up unless you're willing to give him ...
JULIEANNE O'CONNOR
Life is surreal. When you step back and really take a look at it, the irony is absolute.
JULIEANNE O'CONNOR
Ladies, you have a ton of power if you just understand the fundamental differences between men and w...
JULIEANNE O'CONNOR
When it was dark, you always carried the sun in your hand for me.
SEáN O'CASEY
You cannot borrow half of who you are from someone else, yet people try to do it all of the time, th...
JENNIFER O'NEILL
For Equilibrium, a Blessing:
Like the joy of the sea coming home to shore,
May the relief ...
JOHN O'DONOHUE
Sometimes, when people speak, I cease listening to their words and zoom in instead on the cadence, a...
ROSIE O'DONNELL
It was a great mistake, my being born a man, I would have been much more successful as a seagull or ...
EUGENE O'NEILL
It could be a meeting on the street, or a party or a lecture, or just a simple, banal introduction, ...
JOHN O'DONOHUE
The world rests in the night. Trees, mountains, fields, and faces are released from the prison of sh...
JOHN O'DONOHUE
Your noble friend will not accept pretension but will gently and very firmly confront you with your ...
JOHN O'DONOHUE
The ego is the false self-born out of fear and defensiveness.
JOHN O'DONOHUE
If you try to view yourself through the lenses that others offer you, all you will see are distortio...
JOHN O'DONOHUE
Love allows understanding to dawn, and understanding is precious. Where you are understood, you are ...
JOHN O'DONOHUE
We do not need to go out and find love; rather, we need to be still and let love discover us.
JOHN O'DONOHUE
Beauty is the illumination of your soul.
JOHN O'DONOHUE
Real friendship or love is not manufactured or achieved by an act of will or intention. Friendship i...
JOHN O'DONOHUE
When love awakens in your life, in the night of your heart, it is like the dawn breaking within you....
JOHN O'DONOHUE
No one else has access to the world you carry around within yourself; you are its custodian and entr...
JOHN O'DONOHUE
Your beloved and your friends were once strangers. Somehow at a particular time, they came from the ...
JOHN O'DONOHUE
Your soul knows the geography of your destiny. Your soul alone has the map of your future, therefore...
JOHN O'DONOHUE
If you send out goodness from yourself, or if you share that which is happy or good within you, it w...
JOHN O'DONOHUE
Every friendship travels at sometime through the black valley of despair. This tests every aspect of...
JOHN O'DONOHUE
All you can ever achieve is a sense of your soul. You gain little glimpses of its light, colors, and...
JOHN O'DONOHUE
You are as young as you feel. If you begin to feel the warmth of your soul, there will be a youthful...
JOHN O'DONOHUE
Behind your image, below your words, above your thoughts, the silence of another world waits.
JOHN O'DONOHUE