Inside I feel much like a 12-year-old or a 17-year-old who knows big words. — Tim O'Brien Copy Share Image
I want you to feel what I felt. I want you to know why story-truth is truer sometimes than happening-truth. — Tim O'Brien Copy Share Image
It wasn't a question of deceit. Just the opposite; he wanted to heat up the truth, to make it burn so hot… — Tim O'Brien Copy Share Image
If a story seems moral, do not believe it. If at the end of a war story you feel uplifted, or if… — Tim O'Brien Copy Share Image
But I do like churches. The way it feels inside. It feels good when you just sit there, like you're in a… — Tim O'Brien Copy Share Image
...you find yourself studying the fine colors on the river, you feel wonder and awe at the setting of the sun, and… — Tim O'Brien Copy Share Image
I cannot remember much, I cannot feel much. Maybe erasure is necessary. Maybe the human spirit defends itself as the body does,… — Tim O'Brien Copy Share Image
What would you do? Would you jump? Would you feel pity for yourself? Would you think about your family and your childhood… — Tim O'Brien Copy Share Image
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 Copy Share Image
The goal, I suppose, any fiction writer has, no matter what your subject, is to hit the human heart and the tear… — Tim O'Brien Copy Share Image
Mitchell Sanders was right. For the common soldier, at least, war has the feel-the spiritual texture-of a great ghostly fog, thick and… — Tim O'Brien Copy Share Image
Even now, as I write this, I can still feel that tightness. And I want you to feel it--the wind coming off… — Tim O'Brien Copy Share Image
“Yes, the issue was courage. It always had been, even as a kid. Things scared him. He couldn't help it. Noise scared him, dark… — Tim O'Brien Copy Share
The thing about a story is that you dream it as you tell it, hoping that others might then dream along with you, and… — Tim O'Brien Copy Share
Fiction, maybe art in general, is a tentative, uncertain enterprise; it's not science, it's an exploration, but you never find much in the way… — Tim O'Brien Copy Share
“I learned that words make a difference. It's easier to cope with a kicked bucked than a corpse; if it isn't human, it doesn't… — Tim O'Brien Copy Share
“Stories are for eternity, when memory is erased, when there is nothing to remember except the story.” — Tim O'Brien Copy Share
“The story' Sanders would say "the whole tone, man, you're wrecking it." Tone?' The sound. You need to get a consitent sound, like slow… — Tim O'Brien Copy Share
“On occasions the war was like a Ping-Pong ball. You could put fancy spin on it, you could make it dance.” — Tim O'Brien Copy Share
“Forty-three years old, and the war occurred half a lifetime ago, and yet the remembering makes it now. And sometimes remembering will lead to… — Tim O'Brien Copy Share
“He thought about the difference between good times and bad times, and how funny it was that he could not state the difference, only… — Tim O'Brien Copy Share
A lie, sometimes, can be truer than the truth, which is why fiction gets written. — Tim O'Brien Copy Share
My life is storytelling. I believe in stories, in their incredible power to keep people alive, to keep the living alive, and the dead. — Tim O'Brien Copy Share
With a hangover and with fear, it is difficult to put a helmet on your head. — Tim O'Brien Copy Share
