Though I continue to tell stories about Iraq, I sometimes fear this makes me a fraud. I feel guilty about the sorrow I feel because I know it is manufactured, and I feel guilty about the sorrow I do not feel because it is owed, it is the barest beginnings of what is owed to the fallen. Phil Klay Read Quote
I was studying with Peter Carey, Colum McCann; but also, my fellow students were really critical readers for me. Phil Klay Read Quote
I’ve certainly thought a lot more about things like tyranny and patriotism and violence. I think I found some kind of clarity – definitely a thicker understanding. Phil Klay Read Quote
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 Read Quote
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 Read Quote
We’re told that when we remember, the same parts of our brain light up as when we experienced the event we’re remembering. Your brain lives through it again. Phil Klay Read Quote
Political novels are full of pitfalls, particularly for a novelist with strong political leanings. Phil Klay Read Quote
There’s a wide spectrum between a Navy SEAL hero-killer and a traumatized victim, but those are the archetypes – hashed and rehashed in the media, in popular culture, in the minds of people with a lot of preconceived notions but not much else. Phil Klay Read Quote
Redeployment’ is a military term. It means to transfer a unit from one area to another. Phil Klay Read Quote
I went straight from the Marine Corps to the MFA. The way that you would express things among Marines is somewhat different than the way you’re supposed to express things in a creative-writing workshop. Phil Klay Read Quote
