In the military I could exercise the power of being automatically respected because of the medals on my chest, not because I had done anything right at the moment to earn that respect. This is pretty nice. It’s also a psychological trap that can stop one’s growth and allow one to get away with just plain bad behavior. Karl Marlantes Read Quote
Vietnam was the first time that Americans of different races had to depend on each other. In the Second World War, they were segregated; it was in Vietnam that American integration happened in the military – and it wasn’t easy. Karl Marlantes Read Quote
I was given the ability to create stories and characters. That’s my part of the long chain of writers, publishers, agents, booksellers, librarians, and a host of others who eventually deliver literature to the world. I want to do for others what Eudora Welty did for me. Karl Marlantes Read Quote
I began writing ‘Matterhorn’ in 1975 and for more than 30 years I kept working on my novel in my spare time, unable to get an agent or publisher to even read the manuscript. Karl Marlantes Read Quote
War is society’s dirty work, usually done by kids cleaning up failures perpetrated by adults. Karl Marlantes Read Quote
The Odyssey’ is the great tale, and I was really taken by ‘The Iliad,’ so I dig into those things, and when I was a kid I didn’t. You’ve gotta have a certain level of understanding yourself before that stuff really starts to resonate. Karl Marlantes Read Quote
Really important books to me are the classics. I try very hard to read them well – you know, especially once I got serious about writing. So, reading Tolstoy several times – ‘War and Peace,’ ‘The Kreutzer Sonata’ – all those were really important to me. Karl Marlantes Read Quote
When the peace treaty is signed, the war isn’t over for the veterans, or the family. It’s just starting. Karl Marlantes Read Quote
For every veteran who goes through a divorce, a wife goes through one, too. For every veteran alone in the basement, there is a wife upstairs, bewildered, isolated and in despair from the dark clouds of war that hangs over family life. Karl Marlantes Read Quote
I don’t want any romantics to go into the military. I’m not a pacifist. I think we need a military, and the better one we have, the better off we are. I don’t want kids going in there thinking that it’s John Wayne on Iwo Jima. That’s not healthy. Karl Marlantes Read Quote
