Tim O'Brien

A thing may happen and be a total lie; another thing may not happen and be truer than the truth.

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

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.

They carried all they could bear, and then some, including a silent awe for the terrible power of the things they carried.

I want you to feel what I felt. I want you to know why story-truth is truer sometimes than happening-truth

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.

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.