In February 1969, 25 years ago, I arrived as a young, terrified PFC on this lonely little hill in Quang Ngai Province. Back then, the place seemed huge and imposing and permanent. Tim O'Brien More Quotes by Tim O'Brien More Quotes From Tim O'Brien 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. Tim O'Brien stories helping facts It was very sad, he thought. The things men carried inside. The things men did or felt they had to do. Tim O'Brien very-sad felt men The thing about a story is that you dream it as you tell it, hoping that others might then dream along with you, and in this way memory and imagination and language combine to make spirits in the head. There is the illusion of aliveness. Tim O'Brien dream inspirational memories I want you to feel what I felt. I want you to know why story-truth is truer sometimes than happening-truth. Tim O'Brien stories want sometimes It was my view then, and still is, that you don't make war without knowing why. Knowledge of course, is always imperfect, but it seemed to me that when a nation goes to war it must have reasonable confidence in the justice and imperative of its cause. You can't fix your mistakes. Once people are dead, you can't make them undead. Tim O'Brien views mistake war Fiction is the lie that helps us understand the truth. Tim O'Brien helping lying fiction Stories are for joining the past to the future. Stories are for those late hours in the night when you can't remember how you got from where you were to where you are. Stories ar for eternity, when memory is erased, when there is nothing to remember except the story. Tim O'Brien night memories past It's a hard thing to explain to somebody who hasn't felt it, but the presence of death and danger has a way of bringing you fully awake. It makes things vivid. Tim O'Brien vivid inspirational way [Y]ou can tell a true war story by its absolute and uncompromising allegiance to obscenity and evil. Tim O'Brien evil stories war They carried all the emotional baggage of men who might die. Grief, terror, love, longing--these were intangibles, but the intangibles had their own mass and specific gravity, they had tangible weight. They carried shameful memories. They carried the common secret of cowardice.... Men killed, and died, because they were embarrassed not to. Tim O'Brien emotional grief memories Men killed, and died, because they were embarrassed not to. Tim O'Brien embarrassed men war Laughter does not deny pain. Laughter - like a wail - acknowledges and replies to pain. Tim O'Brien laughter pain doe When your afraid,reallyafraid, you see things you never saw before, you pay attention to the world. Tim O'Brien pay attention world Storytelling is the essential human activity. The harder the situation, the more essential it is. Tim O'Brien storytelling situation essentials What sticks to memory, often, are those odd little fragments that have no beginning and no end. Tim O'Brien sticks littles memories If you don't care for obscenity, you don't care for the truth. Tim O'Brien fearless honesty care Why do our politicians put warnings on cigarette packs and not on their own foreheads? Tim O'Brien cigarette politician warning War is hell, but that's not the half of it, because war is also mystery and terror and adventure and courage and discovery and holiness and pity and despair and longing and love. War is nasty; war is fun. War is thrilling; war is drudgery. War makes you a man; war makes you dead. Tim O'Brien fun love war They did not submit to the obvious alternative, which was simply to close the eyes and fall. So easy, really. Go limp and tumble to the ground and let the muscles unwind and not speak and not budge until your buddies picked you up and lifted you into the chopper that would roar and dip its nose and carry you off to the world. A mere matter of falling, yet no one ever fell. It was not courage, exactly; the object was not valor. Rather, they were too frightened to be cowards. Tim O'Brien coward eye fall 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 fiction-stories sufficient fiction
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