[Y]ou can tell a true war story by its absolute and uncompromising allegiance to obscenity and evil. — Tim O'Brien Copy Share Image
My life is storytelling. I believe in stories, in their incredible power to keep people alive, to keep the living alive, and… — Tim O'Brien Copy Share Image
In war you lose your sense of the definite, hence your sense of truth itself, and therefore it's safe to say that… — Tim O'Brien Copy Share Image
“What stories can do, I guess, is make things present. I can look at things I never looked at. I can attach… — Tim O'Brien Copy Share Image
A good piece of fiction, in my view, does not offer solutions. Good stories deal with our moral struggles, our uncertainties, our… — Tim O'Brien Copy Share Image
you can tell a true war story if it embarrasses you. If you don't care for obscenity, you don't care for the… — Tim O'Brien Copy Share Image
I'm skimming across the surface of my own history, moving fast, riding the melt beneath the blades, doing loops and spins, and… — Tim O'Brien Copy Share Image
By telling stories, you objectify your own experience. You separate it from yourself. You pin down certain truths. You make up others.… — Tim O'Brien Copy Share Image
The thing about a story is that you dream it as you tell it, hoping that others might then dream along with… — Tim O'Brien Copy Share Image
For Rat Kiley, I think, facts were formed by sensation, not the other way around, and when you listened to one of… — Tim O'Brien Copy Share Image
Stories are for joining the past to the future. Stories are for those late hours in the night when you can't remember… — Tim O'Brien Copy Share Image
You can tell a true war story by the questions you ask. Somebody tells a story, let's say, and afterward you ask,… — Tim O'Brien Copy Share Image
“Forty-three years old, and the war occurred half a lifetime ago, and yet the remembering makes it now. And sometimes remembering will… — Tim O'Brien Copy Share Image
In any war story, but especially a true one, it's difficult to separate what happened from what seemed to happen. What seems… — Tim O'Brien Copy Share Image
And in the end, of course, a true war story is never about war. It's about sunlight. It's about the special way… — Tim O'Brien Copy Share Image
I'll picture Rat Kiley face, his grief, and I'll think, You dumb cooze. Because she wasn't listening. It wasn't a war story.… — Tim O'Brien Copy Share Image
Can the foot soldier teach anything important about war, merely for having been there? I think not. He can tell war stories. — 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
In any war story, but especially a true one, it's difficult to separate what happened from what seemed to happen. — Tim O'Brien Copy Share Image
But in a story, which is a kind of dreaming, the dead sometimes smile and sit up and return to the world. — 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 the thing about remembering is that you don't forget. You take your material where you find it, which is in your… — 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 Image
It's very hard to articulate the things that are important about writing. — Tim O'Brien Copy Share Image
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 Image
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 Image
“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 Image
“Stories are for eternity, when memory is erased, when there is nothing to remember except the story.” — Tim O'Brien Copy Share Image
“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 Image
“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 Image
“They were afraid of dying, but they were even more afraid to show it.” — Tim O'Brien Copy Share Image
“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 Image
“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 Image
A lie, sometimes, can be truer than the truth, which is why fiction gets written. — Tim O'Brien Copy Share Image
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