Writer Quotes by Tim O'Brien

“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

It's very hard to articulate the things that are important about writing.

— Tim O'Brien

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

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

“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

“Stories are for eternity, when memory is erased, when there is nothing to remember except the story.”

— Tim O'Brien

“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

“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

“They were afraid of dying, but they were even more afraid to show it.”

— Tim O'Brien

“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

“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

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

— Tim O'Brien