It was all absurd, without reason or meaning. People who didn't know each other were going to kill each other over a hill none of them cared about

Everything is touched by the holy when it is in the presence of death.

When I first got back from the war, I said, 'I'm gonna write the Great American Novel about the Vietnam War.' So I sat down and wrote 1,700 pages of sheer psychotherapy drivel. It was first person, and there would be pages about wet socks and cold feet.

I mean, if you're proud of what you've done when you've served in the military, well then we call that bragging. And if you are unhappy about what happened, we call that complaining. And so what are you going to do?

Cynicism is no more mature than naïveté. You're no more mature, just more burned.

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.

Matterhorn is my metaphor of the Vietnam War - we built it, we abandoned it, we assaulted it, we lost, and then we abandoned it again.