We're told that when we remember, the same parts of our brain light up as when we experienced the event we're remembering. Your brain lives through it again.

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.

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

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

People should be able to tell stories that are important to them to try and understand what they mean. I don't think you figure anything out on your own. Certainly not war stories.

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.

In the Marine Corps, you meet this really broad segment of the country; you're working with people from all kinds of backgrounds. And it exposes you to the American military, particularly the American military at war.

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.

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

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.

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.

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

I was studying with Peter Carey, Colum McCann; but also, my fellow students were really critical readers for me.

Political novels are full of pitfalls, particularly for a novelist with strong political leanings.

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

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.

The notion that war forever separates veterans from the rest of mankind has been long embedded in our collective consciousness.

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.

The Iraq I returned from was, in my mind, a fairly simple place. By which I mean it had little relationship to reality. It's only with time and the help of smart, empathetic friends willing to pull through many serious conversations that I've been able to learn more about what I witnessed.

It's very strange getting out of the military, when you've lived in Iraq, and people you know are going overseas again and again. Some of them are getting injured.

I suppose it is the lot of soldiers and Marines to be objectified according to the politics of the day and the mood of the American people about their war.

The Cold War provided justification for a larger peacetime military, since we were never really at peace, or so the argument went.

When I tell stories about Iraq, the ones people react to are always the stories of violence. This is strange for me.

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.

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

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

Less than 1 percent of American have served in 12 years of war, and serious public conversation about military policy is sorely lacking.

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 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.

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

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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.

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.

I didn't want to write a 'this is how it is' Iraq book, because the Iraq War is an intensely complicated variety of things.

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

I've certainly thought a lot more about things like tyranny and patriotism and violence. I think I found some kind of clarity - definitely a thicker understanding.

It's often difficult to get perspective on your own stories, on your own experiences, without talking them through with someone who is genuinely interested in thinking about them. And that's the key.