It's very hard to articulate the things that are important about writing.

A true war story is never moral.

It's very hard to articulate the things that are important about writing.

Why do our politicians put warnings on cigarette packs and not on their own foreheads?

All that peace, man, if felt so good it hurt. I want to hurt it back.

War is hell, but that's not the half of it, because war is also mystery and terror and adventure and courage and discovery and holiness and pity and despair and longing and love. War is nasty; war is fun. War is thrilling; war is drudgery. War makes you a man; war makes you dead.

By telling stories, you objectify your own experience. You separate it from yourself. You pin down certain truths. You make up others. You start sometimes with an incident that truly happened, and you carry it forward by inventing incidents that did not in fact occur but that nonetheless help to clarify and explain.