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Tim O'Brien


American
October 1, 1946
Author
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Everyone acts stupid at some time in order to be loved.


Tim O'Brien
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I think I'm a pretty moral guy, a very moral guy, but I'm not perfect.


Tim O'Brien
I grew up with the Gene Kelly look at war. The cheerful kind of stories you tell about a horrendous war.
Tim O'Brien
Tags: War You About
I returned to Vietnam in '94, and even then, all those decades later, walking around that place, I remained afraid. And, in some ways, rightly so.
Tim O'Brien
Tags: Some Then Even
I showed up in October 1946, part of an early surge that would become a great nationwide baby boom. My sister Kathy was born a year later.
Tim O'Brien
Tags: Great Up Would
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.
Tim O'Brien
Tags: Science Our World
My life is storytelling. I believe in stories, in their incredible power to keep people alive, to keep the living alive, and the dead.
Tim O'Brien
Tags: Power People Life
A writer's obligation is to invent: to go beyond what did happen and to look at what could have happened but didn't. Fiction writers are born liars.
Tim O'Brien
Tags: Go Could Look
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.
Tim O'Brien
Tags: You People Way
America before the 1960s was a pretty innocent place. We were the Lone Ranger galloping off to the rescue of the needy and the oppressed of the world, and we could get things done.
Tim O'Brien
Tags: Get Things World
Unlike Chicago or New York, small-town Minnesota did not allow a man's failings to disappear beneath a veil of numbers. People talked. Secrets did not stay secret.
Tim O'Brien
Tags: People Man New
Sure, best seller. I'd love to knock Stephen King off the top of the list. I know I won't, but, after all, I spend my life inventing a different reality.
Tim O'Brien
Tags: Best Life Know
I could feel my moral compass as a soldier, in danger of - I could feel the squeeze, the pressure of frustration and anger and fear combining on me... I felt the danger; I felt the squeeze of it.
Tim O'Brien
Tags: Fear Anger Me
I didn't get into writing to make money or get famous or any of that. I got into it to hit hearts, and man, when I get letters not just from the soldiers but from their kids, especially their kids, it makes it all worthwhile.
Tim O'Brien
Tags: Money Famous Just
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.
Tim O'Brien
Vietnam was the defining event for my generation. It spilled over into all facets of American life - into music, into the pulpits, in churches of our country. It spilled over into the city streets, police forces. And even if you were born late in the generation, Vietnam was still part of your childhood.
Tim O'Brien
Tags: Music You Life
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.
Tim O'Brien
Tags: Me Like Out