O'Brien explains that he is a writer now and was once a soldier, but that most of the other stories comprising his "memoir" are invented and that he never killed the Viet Cong soldier. He explains that his style of stories that seem to be truthful but are fiction demonstrate that "story-truth is truer sometimes than happening-truth." O'Brien, as an author, explains that stories can be used to tell the truth or a version of it, like when Kathleen asks O'Brien if he has ever killed a man and he says yes.
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