Quotes from Phil Klay

Sometimes macho language is to mask things people are not ready to deal with.

Prayer in a combat zone serves exactly the same purpose as it does in peacetime. In war, the stakes are life and death, true; but if you believe in God and in the notion of a human soul, then we are always making decisions of tremendous significance.

I was a public affairs officer. I worked with the media, but I didn't just stay at my desk. I assisted in military duties, travelled around Anbar province, hung out with a wide variety of Marines.

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.

I ended up going to Dartmouth, and I did Marine Officer Candidate School during my junior summer.

When I was in Marine training I memorised 'The Waste Land,' which was a significant experience in terms of really breaking apart language and thinking about how the different voices in that poem function.

I did try to write in Iraq, and I failed. I think you just don't have the brain space for it.

Even if torture works, what is the point of 'defending' America using a tactic that is a fundamental violation of what America ought to mean?

Treating war as farce is one way soldiers deal with it.

I like the ethos of the military and the idea of joining an institution in which, at the very least, everyone who signs up believes in something.

People lie to themselves all the time about what they've been through and what it means - I'm no exception. But you write those lies down - lies that really matter to you and that are really painful to let go of because they've become a part of who you are - and they don't work.

I always wrote - not about war, necessarily, but I always wrote stories. I tried to write while I was in Iraq. It's not really - I didn't do a very good job, and not about war.