good ole tim.

Isn't it crazy how some people can write SO well? I am not one of them. Fortunately, there is so much out there for me to get a hold of. I love to read. I am amazed at how so many can pour out their words so beautifully and really get their thoughts onto paper. Though I love to journal, and ya know blog, my thoughts just tend to get jumbled in my head and I cannot get a really good grasp on them to write them down. I used to not like fiction books very much because I would finish and remember that none of that really happened. I would get so caught up in the story, just wishing that it had really happened somewhere, sometime. After I read The Things They Carried by Tim O'Brien, my view changed. I realized that story telling can reveal the truth. His fiction is different in that it is hard to tell when something actually happened in the story, and when he is just making it up. I love so many quotes from this book, and so many of his quotes in general. He is one of those writers...the writers of the books that may be easy to read, but are hard to write. If you have not read this book, you should seriously consider it. His books are unconventional; the best kind of books in my opinion.

Just some of Tim O'Brien's thoughts...I like 'em.

"I want you to feel what I felt. I want you to know why story-truth is truer sometimes than happening-truth. That's what fiction is for. It's for getting at the truth when the truth isn't sufficient for the truth."

"And in the end, of course, a true war story is never about war. It's about sunlight. It's about the special way that dawn spreads out on a river when you know you must cross the river and march into the mountains and do things you are afraid to do. It's about love and memory. It's about sorrow. It's about sisters who never write back and people who never listen."

"Forty-three years old, and the war occurred half a lifetime ago, and yet the remembering makes it now. And sometimes remembering will lead to a story, which makes it forever. That's what stories are for. 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 are for eternity, when memory is erased, when there is nothing to remember except the story."

"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, our contradictions, our endless quest for understanding. Good stories do not resolve the mysteries of the human spirit but rather describe and expand up on those mysteries."