-
People lie to themselves all the time about what they've been through and what it means - I'm no exception. But you write those lies down - lies that really matter to you and that are really painful to let go of because they've become a part of who you are - and they don't work.
Phil Klay -
Marines and soldiers don't issue themselves orders; they don't send themselves overseas. United States citizens elect the leaders who send us overseas.
Phil Klay
-
The wars in Iraq and Afghanistan are as much every U.S. citizen's wars as they are the veterans' wars. If we don't assume that civilians have just as much ownership and the moral responsibilities that we have as a nation when we embark on something like that, then we're in a very bad situation.
Phil Klay -
I was studying with Peter Carey, Colum McCann; but also, my fellow students were really critical readers for me.
Phil Klay -
I doubt there's anything you could say to Donald Rumsfeld that would puncture the armor of his narcissism.
Phil Klay -
I have, for a very long time, been a huge admirer of Marilynne Robinson, whose work I just love.
Phil Klay -
One of the things that's difficult for people to understand is when you join the military, you don't sign up as an endorsement of any particular policy of the moment.
Phil Klay -
I was a public affairs officer. I worked with the media, but I didn't just stay at my desk. I assisted in military duties, travelled around Anbar province, hung out with a wide variety of Marines.
Phil Klay
-
I did try to write in Iraq, and I failed. I think you just don't have the brain space for it.
Phil Klay -
Responsibility and accountability is a big part of being in the military.
Phil Klay -
A lot of times, you're interacting with people for whom you're one of the very few veterans that they've met or had a lot of interactions with, and there's a temptation for you to feel like you can pontificate about what the experience was or what it meant, and that leads to a lot of nonsense.
Phil Klay -
I'd been in college studying English creative writing and history when I made the decision to join the Marines in the runup to the Iraq war.
Phil Klay -
When I first came back from Iraq, I of course found myself thinking a lot about it. Not just my experiences, but those of people I talked to, friends, and colleagues.
Phil Klay -
There's a very particular way that the military speaks. There's a lot of profanity and a lot of acronyms.
Phil Klay
-
Writing fiction was a way to take the ideas that troubled me or confused me and put them under pressure.
Phil Klay -
The civilian wants to respect what the veteran has gone through. The veteran wants to protect memories that are painful and sacred to him from outside judgment.
Phil Klay -
There's something odd about working 24/7, being consumed with everything that's happening in Iraq, and then coming back to the country that ordered you over there only to realize that a lot of Americans are not really paying attention.
Phil Klay -
People should be able to tell stories that are important to them to try and understand what they mean. I don't think you figure anything out on your own. Certainly not war stories.
Phil Klay -
At least for me, writing a book is continual exposure to blind spots. There were things I wanted to be true and wanted to believe, but it always got more complicated in the fiction.
Phil Klay -
I grew up a little north of New York City and went to high school at Regis, an all-boys tuition-free high school in Manhattan.
Phil Klay
-
Going to war is a rare experience in American culture, so it's easy for simple notions to gain a lot of weight. The reality is always more complex.
Phil Klay -
I saw so many radically different versions of Iraq. It would have been difficult for me to come back and think, 'This is the Iraq experience.'
Phil Klay -
I suppose it is the lot of soldiers and Marines to be objectified according to the politics of the day and the mood of the American people about their war.
Phil Klay -
Pity sidesteps complexity in favor of narratives that we're comfortable with, reducing the nuances of a person's experience to a sound bite.
Phil Klay