318 Quotes by Tim O'Brien

  • Author Tim O'Brien
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    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.

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  • Author Tim O'Brien
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    Fantasy has a dark side to it. It also has a light hemisphere - the power of the human imagination to keep going, to imagine a better tomorrow.

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  • Author Tim O'Brien
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    Is the Mona Lisa an 'accurate' representation of the actual human model for the painting? Who knows? Who cares? It's a great piece of art. It moves us. It makes us wonder, makes us gape - finally makes us look inward at ourselves.

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  • Author Tim O'Brien
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    All that peace, man, if felt so good it hurt. I want to hurt it back.

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  • Author Tim O'Brien
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    I know what it is to feel unloved, to want revenge, to make mistakes, to suffer disappointment, yet also to find the courage to go forward in life.

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  • Author Tim O'Brien
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    My life is storytelling. I believe in stories, in their incredible power to keep people alive, to keep the living alive, and the dead.

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  • Author Tim O'Brien
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    ...his love was too much for him, he felt paralyzed, he wanted to sleep inside her lungs and breathe her blood and be smothered.

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  • Author Tim O'Brien
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    '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.

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