Phil Klay

Fiction is a place where people can meet, where they take the time to very seriously examine and think about the experiences…

— Phil Klay

“late for that,” said Major Zima. “Besides, if there’s one thing I’ve learned doing Civil Affairs in Iraq, it’s that it’s hard…

— Phil Klay

Our country regularly uses military force, but only a fraction of Americans serve in the military. This means fewer and fewer people…

— Phil Klay

Part of the reason I'm writing it is to try to figure out what that is myself. It's not like I came…

— Phil Klay

“She spent all his combat pay before he got back, and she was five months pregnant, which, for a Marine coming back…

— Phil Klay

War is too strange to be processed alone.

— Phil Klay

There are two ways to tell the story. Funny or sad. Guys like it funny, with lots of gore and a grin…

— Phil Klay

“And glad as I was to be in the States, and even though I hated the past seven months and the only…

— Phil Klay

“Chaplain Vega’s a tall Mexican guy with a mustache that looks like it’s about to jump off his face and fuck the…

— Phil Klay

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…

— Phil Klay

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

— Phil Klay

“In 2008, around the time I got there, the 82nd Air- borne was building greenhouses near Tikrit. It was a brave new…

— Phil Klay

The part of the strangeness of coming back from the war is the way we talk about it. We try to have…

— Phil Klay

“We shot dogs. Not by accident. We did it on purpose, and we called it Operation Scooby. I'm a dog person, so…

— Phil Klay

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

— Phil Klay

I wrote some weird magical realism stories that are probably on some hard drive somewhere, and if I ever uncover that hard…

— Phil Klay

Sin is a lonely thing, a worm wrapped around the soul, shielding it from love, from joy, from communion with fellow men…

— Phil Klay

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…

— Phil Klay

“Redeployment" first appeared in Crania, "After Action Report" in Tin House, and a portion of "Ten Kliks South" in Cuemica.”

— Phil Klay

“Besides, everyone says TQ's got the best chow hall in Anbar, and soon we'll be back in the COP.”

— Phil Klay

And that was my homecoming. It was fine, I guess. Getting back feels like your first breath after nearly drowning. Even if…

— Phil Klay

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

— Phil Klay

“Bob, I quickly learned, had an existential view of the Iraq war.”

— Phil Klay

“First time was instinct. I hear O’Leary go, “Jesus,” and there’s a skinny brown dog lapping up blood the same way he’d…

— Phil Klay

I think in America, especially today, our relationship to war is incredible distant. Yet narratives of war have such a primal power…

— Phil Klay