Tim O'Brien

Tim O'Brien

"Nostalgia-- that's the basic sickness, and I never heard of a doctor who can cure it."
30 Quotes
"Nostalgia-- that's the basic sickness, and I never heard of a doctor who can cure it."
Tim O'Brien
"And in the end, really, there's nothing much to say about a true war story, except maybe "Oh."
Tim O'Brien
"If you don't care for obscenity, you don't care for the truth."
Tim O'Brien
"But truly it was not the money that mattered. It was the distant glitter of everything that was possible in the world, the things she had always wanted for herself and could not name and called happiness because there was no other word."
Tim O'Brien
"That’s what fiction is for. It’s for getting at the truth when the truth isn’t sufficient for the truth."
Tim O'Brien
"He wanted to heat up the truth, to make it burn so hot that you would feel exactly what he felt."
Tim O'Brien
"On occasions the war was like a Ping-Pong ball. You could put fancy spin on it, you could make it dance."
Tim O'Brien
"Writing doesn’t get easier with experience. The more you know, the harder it is to write."
Tim O'Brien
"A good piece of fiction, in my view, does not offer solutions. Good stories deal with our moral struggles, our uncertainties, our dreams, our blunders, our contradictions, our endless quest for understanding. Good stories do not resolve the mysteries of the human spirit but rather describe and expand up on those mysteries."
Tim O'Brien
"A lie, sometimes, can be truer than the truth, which is why fiction gets written."
Tim O'Brien
"That's what fiction is for. It's for getting at the truth when the truth isn't sufficient for the truth."
Tim O'Brien
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