War is too strange to process alone.

Fiction offered me tools that allowed me to approach a wider variety of issues than the events of my own life would.

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.

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.

War is too strange to be processed alone,

Writing fiction means putting a lot of what you believe about the world at risk, because you have to follow your characters.

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.

Veteran art creates a meeting place between veterans and civilians, or simply between veterans with different experiences.

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.

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.