Tim O'Brien People Quotations

My life is storytelling. I believe in stories, in their incredible power to keep people alive, to keep the living alive, and the dead.

I carry the memories of the ghosts of a place called Vietnam - the people of Vietnam, my fellow soldiers.

Unlike Chicago or New York, small-town Minnesota did not allow a man's failings to disappear beneath a veil of numbers. People talked. Secrets did not stay secret.

The people in 'July, July' do find themselves looking backward, talking to others and to themselves about those over-the-cliff, fork-in-the-road moments in their lives. I imagine this is what must happen at a 30th college reunion.

With no draft, the only people who went to war were those who wanted to, or at least those who wanted to join the military.