Quotes from Phil Klay

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

Responsibility and accountability is a big part of being in the military.

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.

For me, leaving the Marine Corps was more disorienting than returning home.

I'd been in college studying English creative writing and history when I made the decision to join the Marines in the runup to the Iraq war.

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.

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

I literally went straight to New York City from Iraq, which was bizarre and complicated. I was walking down Madison Avenue, and it was spring, and people were smartly dressed, and it was so strange because there was no sense that we were at war. It was something to grapple with.

People have a very political way of looking at war, and that's understandable.

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?

There's a tradition in war writing that the veteran goes over and sees the truth of war and comes back. And I'm skeptical of that.