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" With no draft, the only people who went to war were those who wanted to, or at least those who wanted to join the military. "
Tim O'Brien
People
Draft
Join
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" Pinkville was called Pinkville because in the military maps, it was shaded a bright kind of shimmering pink, which signified what was called on the maps a 'built up' area, which was extremely misleading - 'built up' only meant there were little villages and it wasn't just desolate paddy land or unpopulated. "
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" 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. "
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" 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. "
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" I grew up with the Gene Kelly look at war. The cheerful kind of stories you tell about a horrendous war. "
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" I hated the draft, but at the same time, it's something that made every American take war seriously. "
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" 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. "
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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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" Love, as wonderful and horrible as it is, has at its center a kind of pitiful humor. "
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" 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. "
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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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" 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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" 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. "
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