A lie, sometimes, can be truer than the truth, which is why fiction gets written. — Tim O'Brien Copy Share Image
That's what fiction is for. It's for getting at the truth when the truth isn't sufficient for the truth. — Tim O'Brien Copy Share Image
A thing may happen and be a total lie; another thing may not happen and be truer than the truth. — Tim O'Brien Copy Share Image
“I have tried, of course, to be faithful to the evidence. Yet evidence is not truth. It is only evident.” — 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
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
“He wanted to heat up the truth, to make it burn so hot that you would feel exactly what he felt. For… — Tim O'Brien Copy Share Image
“It can be argued, for instance, that war is grotesque. But in truth war is also beauty... Like a killer forest fire,… — 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
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
“Most of this I've told before, or at least hinted at, but what I have never told is the full truth. How… — 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
“If you don’t care for obscenity, you don’t care for the truth; if you don’t care for the truth, watch how you… — 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
