Phil Klay Quotes

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Last Updated on May 30, 2021

Because
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Nov 07, 2020

I don't want to act as though my deployment was particularly rough, because it wasn't. I had a very mild deployment; I was a staff officer.

Myself
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Nov 07, 2020

When I first came back from Iraq, I of course found myself thinking a lot about it. Not just my experiences, but those of people I talked to, friends, and colleagues.

Important
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Nov 07, 2020

A lot of the great pieces of journalism from Iraq showed how important command influence was in violent, aggressive environments, where Marines and soldiers had a constrained set of choices to make in sudden moments.

Place
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Nov 07, 2020

We have a tendency to think of war as this quasi-mystical thing, and that interpretation flattens the experience - by using different perspectives, I wanted to open a place for readers to compare and contrast, to make judgments, to engage.

Media
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Nov 07, 2020

There's a wide spectrum between a Navy SEAL hero-killer and a traumatized victim, but those are the archetypes - hashed and rehashed in the media, in popular culture, in the minds of people with a lot of preconceived notions but not much else.

Me
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Nov 07, 2020

I got to travel around Anbar Province, had a great group of Marines who worked for me who traveled around Anbar Province. I got to hang out with a lot of different types of Marines and soldiers and sailors.

Human
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Nov 07, 2020

Bombs do very, very bad things to human bodies. It's incredibly shocking to see.

People
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Nov 07, 2020

I have friends with post-traumatic stress - friends with post-traumatic stress who are, you know, highly successful, capable people.

Experience
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Nov 07, 2020

I'm generally not a fan of didactic art because it papers over many of the hard experiences about war or anything else in life. I wanted to explore various aspects of the experience without an eye towards delivering any particular message.

People
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Nov 07, 2020

It's not a problem to be surrounded by other writers if that's the craft that you're doing. I suppose if you get obsessed with the notion of being a writer more than the writing itself, that would be bad. But I live near really smart, thoughtful people who take writing very seriously, and I can meet them for breakfast and talk books.

Literature
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Nov 07, 2020

I've been asked what differentiates war literature as a category, and I don't think there is anything.

Hell
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Nov 07, 2020

If you write a novel where war is nothing but hell and no one experiences excitement or cracks a dark joke, then you're not actually admitting the full experience.

Good
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Nov 07, 2020

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.

More
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Nov 07, 2020

I have two friends named Matt. They're both scouts in the cavalry. They both served in the same section of Iraq. They both worked with the same Iraqi translator. And yet, if you talk to them, their stories couldn't be more different, because one was there in 2006. One was there in 2008.

Profanity
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Nov 07, 2020

There's a very particular way that the military speaks. There's a lot of profanity and a lot of acronyms.

Good
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Nov 07, 2020

A great writer is a great writer... Tolstoy was not a woman, but 'Anna Karenina' is still a pretty good book.

Nov 07, 2020

It's easier to get people to talk to you if you're a vet and you want to interview a vet about war. Sometimes they open up a little bit easier.

Moment
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Nov 07, 2020

One of the things that's difficult for people to understand is when you join the military, you don't sign up as an endorsement of any particular policy of the moment.

People
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Nov 07, 2020

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

Me
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Nov 07, 2020

Writing fiction was a way to take the ideas that troubled me or confused me and put them under pressure.

Blind
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Nov 07, 2020

At least for me, writing a book is continual exposure to blind spots. There were things I wanted to be true and wanted to believe, but it always got more complicated in the fiction.

Nov 07, 2020

In war, it feels like everything you're doing is more important because you're in the proximity of violence and death, and that proximity changes your relationship to America because it changes the way you see the world.

Politics
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Nov 07, 2020

War is an arena for the display of courage and virtue. Or war is politics by other means. War is a quasi-mystical experience where you get in touch with the real. There are millions of narratives we impose to try to make sense of war.

Nov 07, 2020

I went straight from the Marine Corps to the MFA. The way that you would express things among Marines is somewhat different than the way you're supposed to express things in a creative-writing workshop.

Father
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Nov 07, 2020

There's a tradition of public service in my family. I'm one of three boys that joined the military. My father was in the Peace Corps.

Nov 07, 2020

With fiction, you can take something that bothers you, or that you don't have in clear focus, and you can put it under as much stress as you want. Really get underneath the skin. With nonfiction, you're restricted to what happened.

Look
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Nov 07, 2020

There's a tendency to look at anybody who joined the military as if they underwrote everything that happened policy-wise. That's not really the case. I have a friend who both protested the Iraq War and joined the military, and ended up serving two deployments in Afghanistan.

High
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Nov 07, 2020

Certainly, my exposure in high school to writers like Flannery O'Connor, Shusaku Endo, Fyodor Dostoevsky and Graham Greene was formative.

Language
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Nov 07, 2020

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.

Coffee
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Nov 07, 2020

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.

Love
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Nov 07, 2020

I love opera. I love jazz, especially Mingus. This makes me sound highbrow. I'm not.

High School
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Nov 07, 2020

I grew up a little north of New York City and went to high school at Regis, an all-boys tuition-free high school in Manhattan.

Nov 07, 2020

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

Being
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Nov 07, 2020

There's something odd about working 24/7, being consumed with everything that's happening in Iraq, and then coming back to the country that ordered you over there only to realize that a lot of Americans are not really paying attention.

Nov 07, 2020

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

Thoughts
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Nov 07, 2020

War is complicated and intense, and it takes time and thoughts to understand what it was.

Love
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Nov 07, 2020

I have, for a very long time, been a huge admirer of Marilynne Robinson, whose work I just love.

Know
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Nov 07, 2020

Fiction is the best way I know how to think something through.

Nov 07, 2020

You come back from war, and you have a certain authority to talk about war.

Distance
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Nov 07, 2020

In a strange way, you have to have a certain amount of distance from a thing in order to be able to write about it.

Never
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Nov 07, 2020

Writing 'Redeployment' shook me in ways I never expected.

Nov 07, 2020

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.

People
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Nov 07, 2020

Supposedly, going to war initiates you into this gnostic priesthood of people who've had a liminal experience forever separating them from civilians. Except... you go there, and it is what it is. A form of human activity as varied as any other.

Nov 07, 2020

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

Process
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Nov 07, 2020

War is too strange to process alone.

Mean
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Nov 07, 2020

We're so used to using military terminology in civilian speech that we forget those terms might mean something very specific.

First
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Nov 07, 2020

In State of the Union addresses, I always look at the foreign policy and military parts first, which are generally pretty minimal.

Life
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Nov 07, 2020

You're not supposed to risk your life just for the physical safety of American citizens - you're supposed to risk your life for American ideals as well.

Mean
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Nov 07, 2020

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?

Means
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Nov 07, 2020

'Redeployment' is a military term. It means to transfer a unit from one area to another.

Flattened
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Nov 07, 2020

Oftentimes, discussion of war gets flattened to a discussion of trauma.

Exactly The Same
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Nov 07, 2020

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.

Necessary
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Nov 07, 2020

Resilience is, of course, necessary for a warrior. But a lack of empathy isn't.

Feel
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Nov 07, 2020

After the fighting is done, and even when it's still happening, apologies are often needed for the recounting of bare facts. Sometimes bare facts feel unpatriotic.

Civilian Casualties
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Nov 07, 2020

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.

Just
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Nov 07, 2020

I'm not anti-war. I served in a war, and I served proudly. But just or not, necessary or not, war is the industrial-scale slaughter of other humans.

Deposit
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Nov 07, 2020

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.

Creative Writing
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Nov 07, 2020

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.

Marines
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Nov 07, 2020

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.

Experience
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Nov 07, 2020

I saw so many radically different versions of Iraq. It would have been difficult for me to come back and think, 'This is the Iraq experience.'

Mask
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Nov 07, 2020

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

Always
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Nov 07, 2020

One thing I've always liked about the military is there's a certain amount of pragmatism.

Doubt
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Nov 07, 2020

I doubt there's anything you could say to Donald Rumsfeld that would puncture the armor of his narcissism.

Next
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Nov 07, 2020

It's a professional military. You sign up and agree to allow your countrymen to use your life as they see fit for the next four years. And I think we all should have a greater role in ensuring that we use those lives wisely.

Puzzle
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Nov 07, 2020

I started with things that I was troubled by or confused by or interested in, and then I wrote stories to try to puzzle my way through it. But the question is not how to represent war, because it's an abstract thing that's felt differently for all the characters.

Nov 07, 2020

Marines and soldiers don't issue themselves orders; they don't send themselves overseas. United States citizens elect the leaders who send us overseas.

Bad Situation
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Nov 07, 2020

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.

Feel
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Nov 07, 2020

A lot of times, you're interacting with people for whom you're one of the very few veterans that they've met or had a lot of interactions with, and there's a temptation for you to feel like you can pontificate about what the experience was or what it meant, and that leads to a lot of nonsense.

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