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" 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. "

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" 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. "

" I've been asked what differentiates war literature as a category, and I don't think there is anything. "

" Pity sidesteps complexity in favor of narratives that we're comfortable with, reducing the nuances of a person's experience to a sound bite. "

" Oftentimes, discussion of war gets flattened to a discussion of trauma. "

" If you're going to write about war, the ugly side is inevitable. Suffering and death are obviously part of war. "

" 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. "

" 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. "

" 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. "

" 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. "

" 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.' "

" 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. "

" I started with things that I was troubled by or confused by or interested in, and then I wrote stories to try to puzzle my way through it. But the question is not how to represent war, because it's an abstract thing that's felt differently for all the characters. "

" Writing fiction was a way to take the ideas that troubled me or confused me and put them under pressure. "

" Supposedly, going to war initiates you into this gnostic priesthood of people who've had a liminal experience forever separating them from civilians. Except... you go there, and it is what it is. A form of human activity as varied as any other. "

" Sometimes macho language is to mask things people are not ready to deal with. "

" When I was in Marine training I memorised 'The Waste Land,' which was a significant experience in terms of really breaking apart language and thinking about how the different voices in that poem function. "

" Writing 'Redeployment' shook me in ways I never expected. "

" Marines and soldiers don't issue themselves orders; they don't send themselves overseas. United States citizens elect the leaders who send us overseas. "

" I got to travel around Anbar Province, had a great group of Marines who worked for me who traveled around Anbar Province. I got to hang out with a lot of different types of Marines and soldiers and sailors. "

" The First Battle of Fallujah was called off in part because of the intensity of non-U.S. media coverage of civilian casualties from outlets like Al Jazeera. "

" 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. "

" In the Marine Corps, you meet this really broad segment of the country; you're working with people from all kinds of backgrounds. And it exposes you to the American military, particularly the American military at war. "

" I did try to write in Iraq, and I failed. I think you just don't have the brain space for it. "

" Resilience is, of course, necessary for a warrior. But a lack of empathy isn't. "

" 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. "

" 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. "

" I have, for a very long time, been a huge admirer of Marilynne Robinson, whose work I just love. "

" 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. "

" I like the ethos of the military and the idea of joining an institution in which, at the very least, everyone who signs up believes in something. "

" 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. "