But the thing about remembering is that you don't forget. You take your material where you find it, which is in your life, at the intersection of past and present. The memory-traffic feeds into a rotary up on your head, where it goes in circles for a while, then pretty soon imagination flows in and the traffic merges and shoots off down a thousand different streets. As a writer, all you can do is pick a street and go for the ride, putting things down as they come at you. That's the real obsession. All those stories.
Tim O'Brien[Y]ou can tell a true war story by its absolute and uncompromising allegiance to obscenity and evil.
Tim O'BrienI guess we're really brothers, aren't we? Don't know what that means, except it means that some of the same things we remember.
Tim O'BrienWhen your afraid,reallyafraid, you see things you never saw before, you pay attention to the world.
Tim O'Brien