Tim O'Brien
Tim O'Brien
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionAuthor
Date of Birth1 October 1946
CountryUnited States of America
bad close detail marriage paying
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.
actively detail dramatic dynamic function
To be memorable and to have dramatic impact, informational detail must function actively within the dynamic of a story.
background course detail good imagined insofar physical provide rather rest vital
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.
join people war
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.
concise felt nixon tempted
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.
cherish close ghost hometown life midwest present values window
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.
extremely land maps meant misleading villages
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.
daughter exclude luck wish
It does not exclude him from the process, and we wish his daughter luck.
I think I'm a pretty moral guy, a very moral guy, but I'm not perfect.
grew horrendous kelly stories war
I grew up with the Gene Kelly look at war. The cheerful kind of stories you tell about a horrendous war.
call civilian farmer helping housewife might traps war
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.
easier failure fiction issues largely matters tend
In fiction workshops, we tend to focus on matters of verisimilitude largely because such issues are so much easier to talk about than the failure of imagination.
arrived february hill huge imposing lonely seemed terrified
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.
boat matter move rhythm wonderful
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.