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" 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
World
Live
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" Stories have a special way of putting us inside the people, inside the boots of the soldiers. You're absorbed in a way a documentary or nonfiction can't do for you. "
Tim O'Brien
You
Boots
People
" 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
" 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
" What do you do when you get a draft notice and you think a war is wrong? And I struggled with that for months prior to my being inducted into the army, and I'm still struggling with it, 40 years later. "
Tim O'Brien
Think
War
Army
" 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 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
" 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
" I hated the draft, but at the same time, it's something that made every American take war seriously. "
Tim O'Brien
American
Same
War
" 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
" 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
" 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
" Storytelling is the essential human activity. The harder the situation, the more essential it is. "
Tim O'Brien
Storytelling
Human
More
" 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
" At the bottom, all wars are the same because they involve death and maiming and wounding, and grieving mothers, fathers, sons and daughters. "
Tim O'Brien
Bottom
Death
Same
" I carry the memories of the ghosts of a place called Vietnam - the people of Vietnam, my fellow soldiers. "
Tim O'Brien
Place
Ghosts
Memories
" It's one thing to say you're for the war; it's another thing to send your kid to war - your daughter or your son. "
Tim O'Brien
Daughter
Son
Say
" 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
" 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. "
Tim O'Brien
Exploration
Find
You
" 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
" Working as a journalist, I was always tempted to lie. I felt I could do dialogue better than the person I was interviewing. I felt I could lie better than Nixon and be more concise than some random person I was covering. "
Tim O'Brien
Random
Always
Better
" 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
" In February 1969, 25 years ago, I arrived as a young, terrified PFC on this lonely little hill in Quang Ngai Province. Back then, the place seemed huge and imposing and permanent. "
Tim O'Brien
Young
Years
Place
" Why do fairy tales exist, and why do movies exist? Why do novels exist? There has to be a reason for it; otherwise, none of these things would be there. "
Tim O'Brien
Reason
Why
Things
" If I see a phrase that strikes me as ugly, I'll delete it. Or, if I find a way to say something a bit more freshly than it was expressed originally, I'll do it. Ultimately, you want to try to leave behind the best possible paragraph or sentence. "
Tim O'Brien
Ugly
Find
Me
" Poetry is not an issue of form and enjambments. Poetry, as the word is classically used, has to do with sound and sense. It can be rhyme. It can be rhythm, pace, breath. "
Tim O'Brien
Rhythm
Breath
Pace
" Inside I feel much like a 12-year-old or a 17-year-old who knows big words. "
Tim O'Brien
Big
Feel
Inside
" 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. "
Tim O'Brien
Forget
Sometimes
You
" The word war itself has a kind of glazing abstraction to it that conjures up bombs and bullets and so on, whereas my goal is to try to, so much as I can, capture the heart and the stomach and the back of the throat of readers who can lie in bed at night and participate in a story. "
Tim O'Brien
Story
War
Goal
" Love, as wonderful and horrible as it is, has at its center a kind of pitiful humor. "
Tim O'Brien
Love
Kind
Horrible
" Everyone acts stupid at some time in order to be loved. "
Tim O'Brien
Order
Everyone
Time