Tim O'Brien
Tim O'Brien
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionAuthor
Date of Birth1 October 1946
CountryUnited States of America
bed bombs bullets capture itself lie night readers stomach throat war whereas word
The word war itself has a kind of glazing abstraction to it that conjures up bombs and bullets and so on, whereas my goal is to try to, so much as I can, capture the heart and the stomach and the back of the throat of readers who can lie in bed at night and participate in a story.
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.
birth catholic lived mostly until war year
From the year of his birth in 1914 until the outbreak of war in 1941, my father lived in a mostly white, mostly working-class, mostly Irish Catholic neighborhood in Brooklyn, New York.
war written
I don't think I'd call myself a war writer, but I would probably say I'm a writer who has written about war.
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.
hated time war
I hated the draft, but at the same time, it's something that made every American take war seriously.
death grieving involve sons wars
At the bottom, all wars are the same because they involve death and maiming and wounding, and grieving mothers, fathers, sons and daughters.
aspect entails good human war
War is a fundamental aspect of human existence. It's good to know what war entails and what the human sacrifice is.
draft months notice prior struggled struggling war
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.
characters dedicated form inside labeled war work wrote
'The Things They Carried' is labeled right inside the book as a work of fiction, but I did set out when I wrote the book to make it feel real... I use my own name, and I dedicated the book to characters in the book to give it the form of a war memoir.
kid send war
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.
gone orphans peace treaties until wars widows
The wars don't end when you sign peace treaties or when the years go by. They will echo on until I'm gone and all the widows and orphans are gone.
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.
real war dirty
you can tell a true war story if it embarrasses you. If you don't care for obscenity, you don't care for the truth; if you don't care for the truth, watch how you vote. Send guys to war, they come home talking dirty.