For Rat Kiley, I think, facts were formed by sensation, not the other way around, and when you … - Tim O'Brien

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Most of the interesting people I've ever met have been deviant in one form or another.

Tim O'Brien

For Rat Kiley, I think, facts were formed by sensation, not the other way around, and when you listened to one of his stories, you'd find yourself performing rapid calculations in your head, subtracting superlatives, figuring the square root of an absolute and then multiplying by maybe.

Head, Roots, Squares, Superlatives, Think, Thinking

Same Author Quotes

It was my view then, and still is, that you don't make war without knowing why. Knowledge of course, is always imperfect, but it seemed to me that when a nation goes to war it must have reasonable confidence in the justice and imperative of its cause. You can't fix your mistakes. Once people are dead, you can't make them undead.

Knowing, Mistake, Reasonable, View, War

By telling stories, you objectify your own experience. You separate it from yourself. You pin down certain truths. You make up others. You start sometimes with an incident that truly happened, and you carry it forward by inventing incidents that did not in fact occur but that nonetheless help to clarify and explain.

Facts, Help, Helping, Objectify, Pin, Stories

Fiction is the lie that helps us understand the truth.

Fiction, Helping, Helps, Lie, Lying, Understand

What sticks to memory, often, are those odd little fragments that have no beginning and no end.

Fragments, Littles, Memories, Odd, Sticks

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

Felt, Know, Sometimes, Stories, Truer, Want