A story: A man fires a rifle for many years, and he goes to war. And afterward he turns the rifle in at the armory, and he believes he’s finished with the rifle. But no matter what else he might do with his hands, love a woman, build a house, change his son’s diaper; his hands remember the rifle.

Every war is different. Every war is the same.

Right now in American writing there is no genre as exciting as memoir - the writer can do anything, as long as it works. It's like the 1920s up in this joint. So, I'd say, experiment with how you tell the story. In the best memoir it's not the what, it's how the writer tells the what - meaning and effect through form.

I think the combatant is always burdened with returning and making his way through his past. And that we as citizens have a responsibility to those guys upon return. We have to make some kind of an attempt to understand what their life is like.

My combat action has commenced... I've pissed my pants, but only a little.

My despair is less despair than boredom and loneliness.

A story: A man fires a rifle for many years, and he goes to war. And afterward he turns the rifle in at the armory, and he believes he’s finished with the rifle. But no matter what else he might do with his hands, love a woman, build a house, change his son’s diaper; his hands remember the rifle.