In the next days it took little provocation for us to flick the flint of our Zippo lighters. Thatched roofs take the flame quickly, and on bad days the hamlets of Pinkville burned, taking our revenge in fire. It was good to walk from Pinkville and to see fire behind Alpha Company. It was good, just as pure hate is good. Tim OBrien
About This Quote

The next days took little provocation. The men of Alpha Company used the flint on their Zippo lighters to light the thatched roofs of Pinkville hamlets with such speed that nobody could stop the flames.

Source: If I Die In A Combat Zone, Box Me Up And Ship Me Home

Some Similar Quotes
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  4. If everyone fought for their own convictions there would be no war. - Leo Tolstoy

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More Quotes By Tim OBrien
  1. That's what fiction is for. It's for getting at the truth when the truth isn't sufficient for the truth.

  2. A lie, sometimes, can be truer than the truth, which is why fiction gets written.

  3. In any war story, but especially a true one, it's difficult to separate what happened from what seemed to happen. What seems to happen becomes its own happening and has to be told that way. The angles of vision are skewed. When a booby trap...

  4. It’s a hard thing to explain to somebody who hasn’t felt it, but the presence of death and danger has a way of bringing you fully awake. It makes things vivid. When you’re afraid, really afraid, you see things you never saw before, you pay...

  5. The thing about a story is that you dream it as you tell it, hoping that others might then dream along with you, and in this way memory and imagination and language combine to make spirits in the head. There is the illusion of aliveness.

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