Home
Authors
Tags
App
Get QuoteDark Inspirational Quotes App
" If you write a novel where war is nothing but hell and no one experiences excitement or cracks a dark joke, then you're not actually admitting the full experience. "
Phil Klay
Experience
You
War
Related Quotes:
" I was studying with Peter Carey, Colum McCann; but also, my fellow students were really critical readers for me. "
Phil Klay
Me
Critical
Studying
" There's a tradition in war writing that the veteran goes over and sees the truth of war and comes back. And I'm skeptical of that. "
Phil Klay
Writing
Truth
Tradition
" 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
Culture
People
Media
" 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
Brain
Up
Remembering
" I did try to write in Iraq, and I failed. I think you just don't have the brain space for it. "
Phil Klay
Space
You
Write
" 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
Policy
Understand
People
" I'm generally not a fan of didactic art because it papers over many of the hard experiences about war or anything else in life. I wanted to explore various aspects of the experience without an eye towards delivering any particular message. "
Phil Klay
War
Experience
Art
" I think that just because you've been through an experience doesn't make you the ultimate arbiter of what it means. We figure things out; we work things out through the help of other people who can engage with us but also be intelligently critical. "
Phil Klay
Work
Think
People
" People have a very political way of looking at war, and that's understandable. "
Phil Klay
Looking
Way
War
" Writing fiction was a way to take the ideas that troubled me or confused me and put them under pressure. "
Phil Klay
Pressure
Confused
Ideas
" A great writer is a great writer... Tolstoy was not a woman, but 'Anna Karenina' is still a pretty good book. "
Phil Klay
Pretty
Good
Great
" For me, leaving the Marine Corps was more disorienting than returning home. "
Phil Klay
Me
Than
More
" I have two friends named Matt. They're both scouts in the cavalry. They both served in the same section of Iraq. They both worked with the same Iraqi translator. And yet, if you talk to them, their stories couldn't be more different, because one was there in 2006. One was there in 2008. "
Phil Klay
Different
You
Two
" We have a tendency to think of war as this quasi-mystical thing, and that interpretation flattens the experience - by using different perspectives, I wanted to open a place for readers to compare and contrast, to make judgments, to engage. "
Phil Klay
Place
Experience
Think
" I always wrote - not about war, necessarily, but I always wrote stories. I tried to write while I was in Iraq. It's not really - I didn't do a very good job, and not about war. "
Phil Klay
Good Job
Write
War
" After the fighting is done, and even when it's still happening, apologies are often needed for the recounting of bare facts. Sometimes bare facts feel unpatriotic. "
Phil Klay
Fighting
Done
Feel
" I have, for a very long time, been a huge admirer of Marilynne Robinson, whose work I just love. "
Phil Klay
Time
Long
Long Time
" There's a very particular way that the military speaks. There's a lot of profanity and a lot of acronyms. "
Phil Klay
Way
Very
Profanity
" Resilience is, of course, necessary for a warrior. But a lack of empathy isn't. "
Phil Klay
Resilience
Lack
Empathy
" I ended up going to Dartmouth, and I did Marine Officer Candidate School during my junior summer. "
Phil Klay
Going
Up
Summer
" I love opera. I love jazz, especially Mingus. This makes me sound highbrow. I'm not. "
Phil Klay
Jazz
Sound
Opera
" Certainly, when I'd left Iraq back in 2008, I'd been proud of my service, but whether we'd been successful or not was still an open question. "
Phil Klay
Successful
Service
Back
" It's not a problem to be surrounded by other writers if that's the craft that you're doing. I suppose if you get obsessed with the notion of being a writer more than the writing itself, that would be bad. But I live near really smart, thoughtful people who take writing very seriously, and I can meet them for breakfast and talk books. "
Phil Klay
People
Live
Breakfast
" I didn't want to write a 'this is how it is' Iraq book, because the Iraq War is an intensely complicated variety of things. "
Phil Klay
War
Complicated
Want
" I write in coffee shops, libraries, parks, museums. I get antsy and then get on my bike and go someplace else, letting the ideas spin around in my head as I dodge taxis. "
Phil Klay
Coffee
Museums
Ideas
" In a strange way, you have to have a certain amount of distance from a thing in order to be able to write about it. "
Phil Klay
Able
Write
You
" 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
Believe
Blind
Book
" You're not supposed to risk your life just for the physical safety of American citizens - you're supposed to risk your life for American ideals as well. "
Phil Klay
Life
Risk
You
" Responsibility and accountability is a big part of being in the military. "
Phil Klay
Accountability
Military
Responsibility
" 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
Media
Marines
Desk