Tim O'Brien
Tim O'Brien
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionAuthor
Date of Birth1 October 1946
CountryUnited States of America
war coward cowardice
I was a coward. I went to the war.
warning politician cigarette
Why do our politicians put warnings on cigarette packs and not on their own foreheads?
stories true-story
But this too is true: stories can save us.
soul stories stealing
But in a story I can steal her soul.
fun war adventure
War is hell, but that's not the half of it, because war is also mystery and terror and adventure and courage and discovery and holiness and pity and despair and longing and love. War is nasty; war is fun. War is thrilling; war is drudgery. War makes you a man; war makes you dead.
rotary remember forget
But the thing about remembering is that you don't forget.
lying fiction sometimes
A lie, sometimes, can be truer than the truth, which is why fiction gets written.
dream struggle views
A good piece of fiction, in my view, does not offer solutions. Good stories deal with our moral struggles, our uncertainties, our dreams, our blunders, our contradictions, our endless quest for understanding. Good stories do not resolve the mysteries of the human spirit but rather describe and expand up on those mysteries.
memories littles sticks
What sticks to memory, often, are those odd little fragments that have no beginning and no end...
fear hangover difficult
With a hangover and with fear, it is difficult to put a helmet on your head.
memories past night
Stories are for joining the past to the future. Stories are for those late hours in the night when you can't remember how you got from where you were to where you are. Stories ar for eternity, when memory is erased, when there is nothing to remember except the story.
war safe stories
In war you lose your sense of the definite, hence your sense of truth itself, and therefore it's safe to say that in a war story nothing is ever absolutely true.
nice ideas hindsight
Everything was such a damned nice idea when it was an idea.
hero waiting leaving
Together we understood what terror was: you're not human anymore. You're a shadow. You slip out of your own skin, like molting, shedding your own history and your own future, leaving behind everything you ever were or wanted to believed in. You know you're about to die. And it's not a movie and you aren't a hero and all you can do is whimper and wait.