The notion that war forever separates veterans from the rest of mankind has been long embedded in our collective consciousness. Phil Klay More Quotes by Phil Klay More Quotes From Phil Klay Sin is a lonely thing, a worm wrapped around the soul, shielding it from love, from joy, from communion with fellow men and with God. The sense that I am alone, that none can hear me, none can understand, that no one answers my cries, it is a sickness over which, to borrow from Bernanos, “the vast tide of divine love, that sea of living, roaring flame which gave birth to all things, passes vainly.” Your job, it seems, would be to find a crack through which some sort of communication can be made, one soul to another. Phil Klay communication lonely jobs There are two ways to tell the story. Funny or sad. Guys like it funny, with lots of gore and a grin on your face when you get to the end. Girls like it sad, with a thousand-yard stare out to the distance as you gaze upon the horrors of war they can't quite see. Either way, it's the same story. Phil Klay distance girl war And that was my homecoming. It was fine, I guess. Getting back feels like your first breath after nearly drowning. Even if it hurts, it's good. Phil Klay homecoming hurt firsts Our country regularly uses military force, but only a fraction of Americans serve in the military. This means fewer and fewer people have a direct link to the military, and yet it remains as important as ever that we have a rich understanding of what we are doing as a country. Phil Klay military mean country I've worked hard to remember it...The problem is I'm not sure what's real memory and what's my brain filling in details, like a guy whose heart stops and he thinks he sees a bright light. Except I'm sure of my bright light. Phil Klay real heart memories It's not so much the question that offends me; it's that the people asking it don't seem to respect the moral seriousness of the question. Phil Klay moral asking people War is too strange to be processed alone. Phil Klay strange war I think in America, especially today, our relationship to war is incredible distant. Yet narratives of war have such a primal power in this culture. They mainline directly into a whole series of emotional reactions and understandings of American patriotism, masculinity, and all of these other things. Phil Klay emotional war thinking I wrote some weird magical realism stories that are probably on some hard drive somewhere, and if I ever uncover that hard drive, I'll burn it. I tried to do a little bit of writing while I was in Iraq, but it wasn't the really greatest space for creative production. Phil Klay really-great creative writing The part of the strangeness of coming back from the war is the way we talk about it. We try to have a discussion about the war that doesn't turn into a discussion about one political side or the other. I wanted to reach out and talk to people about it through fiction, the way a narrative can draw someone in and ask them those questions. Phil Klay political war people Part of the reason I'm writing it is to try to figure out what that is myself. It's not like I came back from Iraq and said, "We need to have a conversation, I know exactly what it is." It was just this sort of sense of something missing and then trying to write toward what that was, and to solicit from other people a sense of what that might be. Phil Klay missing writing people Fiction is a place where people can meet, where they take the time to very seriously examine and think about the experiences of other people and about the sorts of moral decisions those characters are making. Phil Klay character people thinking Fiction offered me tools that allowed me to approach a wider variety of issues than the events of my own life would. Phil Klay issues events tools Writing fiction means putting a lot of what you believe about the world at risk, because you have to follow your characters. Phil Klay writing character believe Veteran art creates a meeting place between veterans and civilians, or simply between veterans with different experiences. Phil Klay veteran different-experiences art 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. Phil Klay first like media battle Resilience is, of course, necessary for a warrior. But a lack of empathy isn't. Phil Klay necessary warrior empathy resilience I write in coffee shops, libraries, parks, museums. I get antsy and then get on my bike and go someplace else, letting the ideas spin around in my head as I dodge taxis. Phil Klay go bike coffee ideas The wars in Iraq and Afghanistan are as much every U.S. citizen's wars as they are the veterans' wars. If we don't assume that civilians have just as much ownership and the moral responsibilities that we have as a nation when we embark on something like that, then we're in a very bad situation. Phil Klay nation bad situation moral I don't believe in any Greatest Generation. I believe in great events. They sweep ordinary people up, expose them to extremes of human behavior and unimaginable tests of integrity and courage, and then deposit them back on the home front. Phil Klay courage home integrity people
