Tim O'Brien
Tim O'Brien
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionAuthor
Date of Birth1 October 1946
CountryUnited States of America
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.
inside nonfiction putting stories
Stories have a special way of putting us inside the people, inside the boots of the soldiers. You're absorbed in a way a documentary or nonfiction can't do for you.
left might saying stopped stories time war
After each of my books about the war has appeared, I thought it might be the last, but I've stopped saying that to myself. There are just too many stories left to tell - in fact, more all the time.
alone emotion encourage face less moves ourselves reading stories towards
Stories can encourage us and embolden us to face ourselves and to feel. Stories can make us feel less alone. If we're reading a story that moves us, we can feel that emotion that I feel towards my father or mother or girlfriend. So they can give us late-night company.
enhance obligation science stories writers
Stories are not explanations of the world we live in. Science does that, and math does that. Our obligation as fiction writers is to enhance the mysteries.
stories facts helping
By telling stories, you objectify your own experience. You separate it from yourself. You pin down certain truths. You make up others. You start sometimes with an incident that truly happened, and you carry it forward by inventing incidents that did not in fact occur but that nonetheless help to clarify and explain.
war lying stories
You can tell a true war story by the questions you ask. Somebody tells a story, let's say, and afterward you ask, 'Is it true?' and if the answer matters, you've got your answer . . . Absolute occurrence is irrelevant. A thing may happen and be a total lie; another thing may not happen and be truer than the truth.
fiction-stories fiction sufficient
That's what fiction is for. It's for getting at the truth when the truth isn't sufficient for the truth.
believe people stories
My life is storytelling. I believe in stories, in their incredible power to keep people alive, to keep the living alive, and the dead.
stories
Let the story tell itself.
want body power-of-stories
And as a writer now, I want to save Linda's life. Not her body--her life.
stories true-story
But this too is true: stories can save us.
soul stories stealing
But in a story I can steal her soul.
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.