Tim O'Brien Quotes

I think fiction recues history from its confusions.

The best way to spoil a good story is by sticking to the facts.

That's the trouble with a story spinner. You never know what's real and what's made up. Even when they are telling the truth, they can't stop themselves from spinning it into something better; something prettier, with more of a pattern to it.

All autobiography is fiction.

Fiction is Truth's elder sister. Obviously. No one in the world knew what truth was till some one had told a story.

When you're telling stories, you are actually trying to illuminate some portion of the truth in an artful way. The story may immediately seem to be a lie, but it's like an impressionistic painting - you see the light and the color better than you would with a photo-realistic piece.

I shall try to tell the truth, but the result will be fiction.

A good autobiography is like a document: a mirror of the age on which people can 'depend.' In a novel, by contrast, it's not the facts that matter, but precisely what you add to the facts.

When I was a little kid, I told stories.

Everything is fiction. You only have your own life to work with in the way that a biographer only has the letters and journals to work with.

I don't believe that anything's totally invented... If you're completely inventing a story, there wouldn't be an urge to tell it.

Doesn't all experience crumble in the end to mere literary material?

I think that one of the things you have to do to become a storyteller is spend a lot of time reading stories.

A memoir is my version of events. My perspective. I choose what to tell and what to omit. I choose the adjectives to describe a situation, and in that sense, I'm creating a form of fiction.

I make it all up, and all of it is true.

History is about who tells it.

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.

Fiction comes in all shapes and sizes. Secrets,lies,stories. We all tell them. Sometimes,because we hope to entertain. Sometimes,because we need to distract. And sometimes, because we have to.

People tell stories and it's up to those who listen whether to believe or not." "Shouldn't the storyteller believe it." "The storyteller should tell it.

The facts, even the real ones, must be imagined before they can be stated.

That's what fiction is for. It's for getting at the truth when the truth isn't sufficient for the truth.

All stories are true," Skarpi said. "But this one really happened, if that's what you mean.

Truth is not always injured by fiction.

Every fiction has its base in fact.

Lies are attempts to hide the truth by willfully denying facts. Fiction, on the other hand, is an attempt to reveal the truth by ignoring facts.