A lie, sometimes, can be truer than the truth, which is why fiction gets written.

And in the end, of course, a true war story is never about war. It's about sunlight. It's about the special way that dawn spreads out on a river when you know you must cross the river and march into the mountains and do things you are afraid to do. It's about love and memory. It's about sorrow. It's about sisters who never write back and people who never listen.

There is always the threat of tomorrow's treachery, or next year's treachery, or the treachery implicit in all the tomorrows beyond that.

Inside I feel much like a 12-year-old or a 17-year-old who knows big words.

It's not just the embarrassment of tears. That's part of it, no doubt, but what embarrasses me much more, and always will, is the paralysis that took my heart. A moral freeze: I couldn't decide, I couldn't act, I couldn't comport myself with even a pretense of modest human dignity.

Can the foot soldier teach anything important about war, merely for having been there? I think not. He can tell war stories.

[Y]ou can tell a true war story by its absolute and uncompromising allegiance to obscenity and evil.