"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 soldi...

A lie, sometimes, can be truer than the truth, which is why fiction gets written.
~ Tim O'Brien (author) ~












A lie, sometimes, can be truer than the truth, which is why fiction gets written.
More Tim O'Brien (author) quotes
"He wanted to heat up the truth, to make it burn so hot that you would feel exactly what he felt.
"Writing doesn’t get easier with experience. The more you know, the harder it is to write.
"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...
"That's what fiction is for. It's for getting at the truth when the truth isn't sufficient for the truth.
"In any war story, but especially a true one, it's difficult to separate what happened from what seemed to happen. What seems to happen becomes its own...
"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 imaginatio...
"What stories can do, I guess, is make things present.I can look at things I never looked at. I can attach faces to grief and love and pity and God. I ...
"That’s what fiction is for. It’s for getting at the truth when the truth isn’t sufficient for the truth.