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" 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
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" I live in my head all day long and the world is a little dreamy. "
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" To be memorable and to have dramatic impact, informational detail must function actively within the dynamic of a story. "
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" '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. "
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" 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. "
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" 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. "
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Imagination
Keep Going
Power
" 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
" For me, at least, Vietnam was partly love. With each step, each light-year of a second, a foot soldier is always almost dead, or so it feels, and in such circumstances, you can't help but love. "
Tim O'Brien
Circumstances
Step
Love
" 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
" If you stop loving someone, did you ever love them? If you say you're committed and later you're not committed, well, was the first thing commitment? You see what I mean? This kind of thing has always interested me. "
Tim O'Brien
Love
Commitment
You
" 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. "
Tim O'Brien
Numbers
People
Chicago
" 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
" 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. "
Tim O'Brien
Say
Myself
Think
" 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. "
Tim O'Brien
Farmer
You
War
" Above all, a well-imagined story is organized around extraordinary human behaviors and unexpected and startling events, which help illuminate the commonplace and the ordinary. "
Tim O'Brien
Events
Story
Unexpected
" When writing, I'm not thinking about war, even if I'm writing about it. I'm thinking about sentences, rhythm and story. So the focus, when I'm working, even if it's on a story that takes place at war, is not on bombs or bullets. It's on the story. "
Tim O'Brien
War
Focus
Writing
" 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
" In books or films, it is desirable to have a climactic battle scene, but the world does not operate in those gross dramatic terms. In Vietnam, there was a general aimlessness, not just in the physical sense, but beyond that in the moral and ethical sense. "
Tim O'Brien
Moral
Battle
Beyond
" 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
" The goal, I suppose, any fiction writer has, no matter what your subject, is to hit the human heart and the tear ducts and the nape of the neck and to make a person feel something about the characters are going through and to experience the moral paradoxes and struggles of being human. "
Tim O'Brien
Experience
Moral
Goal
" 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
" 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
" Inside I feel much like a 12-year-old or a 17-year-old who knows big words. "
Tim O'Brien
Big
Feel
Inside
" 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
Afraid
Place
" 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
" A small, seemingly inconsequential event can determine a life. "
Tim O'Brien
Event
Small
Seemingly
" By telling stories, you objectify your own experience. You separate it from yourself. You pin down certain truths. "
Tim O'Brien
Down
Yourself
You
" Love, as wonderful and horrible as it is, has at its center a kind of pitiful humor. "
Tim O'Brien
Love
Kind
Horrible
" 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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Youth
Day
Love
" 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
" 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. "
Tim O'Brien
Ocean
Need
Move On