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" A writer's obligation is to invent: to go beyond what did happen and to look at what could have happened but didn't. Fiction writers are born liars. "
Tim O'Brien
Born
Go
Happen
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" I've been surprised by Austin. I had a cowboy image of the place. It's a pretty sophisticated city - in some ways, more sophisticated than Boston. And there's a lighter feel to the place. It's very good for my spirits. "
Tim O'Brien
Good
Place
Feel
" It's very hard to articulate the things that are important about writing. "
Tim O'Brien
Hard
Important
Things
" Is the Mona Lisa an 'accurate' representation of the actual human model for the painting? Who knows? Who cares? It's a great piece of art. It moves us. It makes us wonder, makes us gape - finally makes us look inward at ourselves. "
Tim O'Brien
Painting
Look
Great
" For me, the way to approach a subject such as Vietnam is through storytelling. "
Tim O'Brien
Me
Way
Vietnam
" War is a fundamental aspect of human existence. It's good to know what war entails and what the human sacrifice is. "
Tim O'Brien
Existence
Good
Know
" America before the 1960s was a pretty innocent place. We were the Lone Ranger galloping off to the rescue of the needy and the oppressed of the world, and we could get things done. "
Tim O'Brien
Innocent
World
Place
" In fiction workshops, we tend to focus on matters of verisimilitude largely because such issues are so much easier to talk about than the failure of imagination. "
Tim O'Brien
Much
Talk
Focus
" The people in 'July, July' do find themselves looking backward, talking to others and to themselves about those over-the-cliff, fork-in-the-road moments in their lives. I imagine this is what must happen at a 30th college reunion. "
Tim O'Brien
People
Find
College
" Laughter does not deny pain. Laughter - like a wail - acknowledges and replies to pain. "
Tim O'Brien
Pain
Does
Like
" I grew up with the Gene Kelly look at war. The cheerful kind of stories you tell about a horrendous war. "
Tim O'Brien
War
Cheerful
Kind
" Everyone acts stupid at some time in order to be loved. "
Tim O'Brien
Order
Everyone
Time
" Fantasy has a dark side to it. It also has a light hemisphere - the power of the human imagination to keep going, to imagine a better tomorrow. "
Tim O'Brien
Imagination
Keep Going
Power
" I didn't get into writing to make money or get famous or any of that. I got into it to hit hearts, and man, when I get letters not just from the soldiers but from their kids, especially their kids, it makes it all worthwhile. "
Tim O'Brien
Soldiers
Money
Man
" 'The Things They Carried' is labeled right inside the book as a work of fiction, but I did set out when I wrote the book to make it feel real... I use my own name, and I dedicated the book to characters in the book to give it the form of a war memoir. "
Tim O'Brien
War
My Own
Feel
" The wars don't end when you sign peace treaties or when the years go by. They will echo on until I'm gone and all the widows and orphans are gone. "
Tim O'Brien
Gone
Peace
You
" I live in my head all day long and the world is a little dreamy. "
Tim O'Brien
World
Long
Live
" By telling stories, you objectify your own experience. You separate it from yourself. You pin down certain truths. "
Tim O'Brien
Down
Yourself
You
" Life is never all one thing. It bounces around. Certainly, my own life has. Look at Woody Allen's funny movies - all the humor comes out of sad stuff. Sometimes you have to laugh, no matter what life deals you. "
Tim O'Brien
Life
Funny
Sad
" Place is so important to me. The Midwest is like a ghost in my life. It's present as I look out the window now. I see Texas, but if I close my eyes and look out the same window, I'm back in my hometown in Worthington, Minnesota, and I cherish those values and that diction. "
Tim O'Brien
Life
Eyes
Values
" We tend to regard history as true and 'The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn' as untrue. That's always puzzled me. "
Tim O'Brien
Adventures
Always
History
" I did not set out to write another novel. One day I sat down with the thought of trying my hand at a piece of nonfiction, a personal memoir of youth, but over the next several weeks, without intending it, the work began evolving into what has become 'Tomcat in Love.' "
Tim O'Brien
Youth
Day
Love
" A bullet can kill the enemy, but a bullet can also produce an enemy, depending on whom that bullet strikes. "
Tim O'Brien
Enemy
Also
Bullet
" I showed up in October 1946, part of an early surge that would become a great nationwide baby boom. My sister Kathy was born a year later. "
Tim O'Brien
Sister
Baby
Great
" When you're so close to material, it would be as if you had come out of a bad marriage. You would be so close to it that you would be paying attention to detail that may not mean a whole lot for the reader. "
Tim O'Brien
Detail
Marriage
Attention
" I received my draft notice right after graduation from college and had three months before going into the Army in September to think about it. "
Tim O'Brien
Think
Three
Graduation
" The human life is all one thing, like a blade tracing loops on the ice: a little kid, a twenty-three-year-old infantry sergeant, a middle-aged writer knowing guilt and sorrow. "
Tim O'Brien
Knowing
Sorrow
Kid
" I could feel my moral compass as a soldier, in danger of - I could feel the squeeze, the pressure of frustration and anger and fear combining on me... I felt the danger; I felt the squeeze of it. "
Tim O'Brien
Frustration
Me
Fear
" In the summer of 1954, after several years in Austin, Minnesota, our family moved across the state to the small, rural town of Worthington, where my dad became regional manager for a life insurance company. To me, at age 7, Worthington seemed a perfectly splendid spot on the earth. "
Tim O'Brien
Me
Age
Earth
" Vietnam was the defining event for my generation. It spilled over into all facets of American life - into music, into the pulpits, in churches of our country. It spilled over into the city streets, police forces. And even if you were born late in the generation, Vietnam was still part of your childhood. "
Tim O'Brien
Music
Life
Police
" To provide background and physical description and all the rest is of course vital to fiction, but vital only insofar as such detail is in the service of a richly imagined story, rather than in the service of good botany or good philosophy or good geography. "
Tim O'Brien
Only
Detail
Service