Tim O'Brien
Tim O'Brien
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionAuthor
Date of Birth1 October 1946
CountryUnited States of America
stories want sometimes
I want you to feel what I felt. I want you to know why story-truth is truer sometimes than happening-truth.
war war-stories stories
A true war story is never moral...
brave important distinction
He wished he could've explained some of this. How he had been braver than he ever thought possible, but how he had not been so brave as he wanted to be. The distinction was important.
moving dark night
You don't know. When I'm out there at night I feel close to my own body, I can feel my blood moving, my skin and fingernails, everything, it's like I'm full of electricity and I'm glowing in the dark - I'm on fire almost - I'm burning away into nothing - but it doesn't matter because I know exactly who I am.
blood giving together
It’s a hard thing to explain to somebody who hasn’t felt it, but the presence of death and danger has a way of bringing you fully awake. It makes things vivid. When you’re afraid, really afraid, you see things you never saw before, you pay attention to the world. You make close friends. You become part of a tribe and you share the same blood- you give it together, you take it together.
essentials storytelling situation
Storytelling is the essential human activity. The harder the situation, the more essential it is.
war evil stories
[Y]ou can tell a true war story by its absolute and uncompromising allegiance to obscenity and evil.
war men embarrassed
Men killed, and died, because they were embarrassed not to.
lying fiction helping
Fiction is the lie that helps us understand the truth.
battle beyond books desirable dramatic ethical general gross moral operate physical
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.
horror lose war
There's something about being amid the chaos and the horror of a war that makes you appreciate all you don't have - and all you may lose forever.
horror lose war
There's something about being amid the chaos and the horror of a war that makes you appreciate all you don't have - and all you may lose forever.
alive
Once you're alive, you can't ever be dead.