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" It's very hard to articulate the things that are important about writing. "
Tim O'Brien
Hard
Important
Things
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" Who do you call a civilian in a guerilla war? I mean, it might be a farmer by day or a merchant, a housewife, and by night the housewife may be helping to make landmines and booby traps and who knows. "
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" In Iraq and Afghanistan, our soldiers signed up intentionally. That's a huge difference from the largely conscripted army of my era. "
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" I live in my head all day long and the world is a little dreamy. "
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" The world comes at me that way - comes at me in clumps of stuff, sometimes little vignettes and sometimes whole stories. And then the rest is erased by the internal filter that erases things for the same reason you'd forget swatting a mosquito. "
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" 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. "
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" 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. "
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" I learned that moral courage is harder than physical courage. "
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" A bullet can kill the enemy, but a bullet can also produce an enemy, depending on whom that bullet strikes. "
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" Fiction is a lie that is told in the service of truth. "
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Fiction
Lie
" Stories can encourage us and embolden us to face ourselves and to feel. Stories can make us feel less alone. If we're reading a story that moves us, we can feel that emotion that I feel towards my father or mother or girlfriend. So they can give us late-night company. "
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Mother
Reading
" I think I'm a pretty moral guy, a very moral guy, but I'm not perfect. "
Tim O'Brien
Guy
Not Perfect
Think
" My life is storytelling. I believe in stories, in their incredible power to keep people alive, to keep the living alive, and the dead. "
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Power
My Life
People
" We tend to regard history as true and 'The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn' as untrue. That's always puzzled me. "
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Adventures
Always
History
" I don't think I'd call myself a war writer, but I would probably say I'm a writer who has written about war. "
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Say
Myself
Think
" I returned to Vietnam in '94, and even then, all those decades later, walking around that place, I remained afraid. And, in some ways, rightly so. "
Tim O'Brien
Walking
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Place
" 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. "
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People
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College
" 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
" A small, seemingly inconsequential event can determine a life. "
Tim O'Brien
Event
Small
Seemingly
" To be memorable and to have dramatic impact, informational detail must function actively within the dynamic of a story. "
Tim O'Brien
Memorable
Impact
Within
" Unlike Chicago or New York, small-town Minnesota did not allow a man's failings to disappear beneath a veil of numbers. People talked. Secrets did not stay secret. "
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Numbers
People
Chicago
" 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
" When I have a book I enjoy, I'm partly in the book. I'm not just observing it. "
Tim O'Brien
Observing
Book
Enjoy
" Stories are not explanations of the world we live in. Science does that, and math does that. Our obligation as fiction writers is to enhance the mysteries. "
Tim O'Brien
Stories
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" No matter how wonderful the story, it has to move on something, and that is language. The words that I use, the pace, the rhythm and cadences all need to be there. If they're not there, the story is like a boat that just sits there and doesn't move on the ocean. "
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Ocean
Need
Move On
" 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.' "
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" 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. "
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Sister
Baby
Great
" In a war without aim, you tend not to aim. You close your eyes, close your heart. The consequences become hit or miss in the most literal sense. "
Tim O'Brien
You
Eyes
Aim
" I know what it is to feel unloved, to want revenge, to make mistakes, to suffer disappointment, yet also to find the courage to go forward in life. "
Tim O'Brien
Mistakes
Revenge
Courage
" 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 of answers. "
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Exploration
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" Sure, best seller. I'd love to knock Stephen King off the top of the list. I know I won't, but, after all, I spend my life inventing a different reality. "
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Life
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Best