Klay Quotes & Sayings

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

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

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. — Phil Klay

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

War is too strange to be processed alone, — Phil Klay

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. — Phil Klay

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

I think that just because you've been through an experience doesn't make you the ultimate arbiter of what it means. We figure things out; we work things out through the help of other people who can engage with us but also be intelligently critical. — Phil Klay

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. — Phil Klay

We've got some PTSD vets," Sarah says, making it sound like she's keeping them in jars somewhere. — Phil Klay

She spent all his combat pay before he got back, and she was five months pregnant, which, for a Marine coming back from a seven-month deployment, is not pregnant enough. — Phil Klay

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. — Phil Klay

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. — Phil Klay

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. — Phil Klay

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

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. — 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 of the question. — Phil Klay

I am reading "The Yellow Birds" by Kevin Powers and "Redeployment" by Phil Klay . Both Powers and Klay are Iraq War vets. Klay's stories are remarkable. — George Packer

Though I continue to tell stories about Iraq, I sometimes fear this makes me a fraud. I feel guilty about the sorrow I feel because I know it is manufactured, and I feel guilty about the sorrow I do not feel because it is owed, it is the barest beginnings of what is owed to the fallen. — Phil Klay

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? — Phil Klay

Reading the e-mail was like getting an ice pick to the brain. I stared blankly at my computer, all higher mental functions short-circuited, and resisted the urge to punch the screen. — 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 lap up water from a bowl. It wasn't American blood, but still, there's that dog, lapping it up. And that's the last straw, I guess, and then it's open season on dogs. — Phil Klay

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

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. — Phil Klay

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

I never thought anyone would pity me because of my time in the Marine Corps. — Phil Klay

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. — Phil Klay

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. — Phil Klay

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. — Phil Klay

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

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

Steve held us to a high standard. He told us he was going to when we first met him at the USA camp. He's been a great leader. I mean, the guy always keeps his composure. He has an amazing mind for the game, and man, Steve, I'm just proud of him. The way he's balanced everybody and let us know what our roles are, he's been great for us. Him and the whole coaching staff. We all deserve this together, we work so hard. — Klay Thompson

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

Pity addresses the perceived suffering, not the whole individual. — Phil Klay

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. — Phil Klay

It just feels good to say we're the best team in the world, with the best player in the world. — Klay Thompson

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. — Phil Klay

We are part of a long tradition of suffering. We can let it isolate us if we want, but we must realize that isolation is a lie. — Phil Klay

The civilian wants to respect what the veteran has gone through. The veteran wants to protect memories that are painful and sacred to him from outside judgment. — Phil Klay

When that word came down that the company had decided that we were going to go theatrical, we hooped and hollered and wahooed and all of that stuff, but the good thing is we didn't have to change anything. It's not like all of a sudden we had to reset, like "Oh my gosh, we're going to theater. We've got to make this better. We've got to make this bigger. We've got to add ... " It was all done. — Klay Hall

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. — Phil Klay

So it was a win-win all the way around. It was an amazing moment, not only for myself and the team behind the film, but for DTS and for John Lasseter. He was always a big fan. He was a proponent, a supporter of the whole thing, and it just worked out. — Klay Hall

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. — 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 first rodent it finds. Kind of mustache only a chaps could get away with in the military. — Phil Klay

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. — Phil Klay

And that was my homecoming. It was fine, I guess. Getting back feels like your first breath after nearly drowning. Even if it hurts, it's good. — Phil Klay

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. — 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 a guy whose heart stops and he thinks he sees a bright light. Except I'm sure of my bright light. — Phil Klay

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. — Phil Klay

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

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. — Phil Klay

Writing 'Redeployment' shook me in ways I never expected. — Phil Klay

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. — Phil Klay

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. — Phil Klay

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

[Prayer] will not protect you. It will help your soul. It's for while you're alive. — Phil Klay

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

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

I'm involved with every single thing that they do as far as just being aware, and then they ask my opinion. I'm involved in the sequence reviews and some of the animation reviews and character designs and things like that. I give my input on that movie as well. — Klay Hall

And yet, I have this sense that this place is holier than back home. Gluttonous, fat, oversexed, overconsuming, materialist home, where we're too lazy to see our own faults. At least here, Rodriguez has the decency to worry about hell. — Phil Klay

It's a powerful moment, when you discover a vocabulary exists for something you'd thought incommunicably unique. Personally, I felt it reading Joseph Conrad's "Lord Jim." I have friends who've found themselves described in everything from science fiction to detective novels. This self-recognition through others is not simply a by-product of art - it's the whole point. — Phil Klay

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. — Phil Klay

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

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. — Phil Klay

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. — Phil Klay

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

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

I mean, they clearly have a process of how they go about making their movies, and John Lasseter has been instrumental in implementing that process for all three studios with the Brain Trust and the way we work and the way we break stories and how it's all creative led. There are no executives in the room. So I think all of that is embraced unilaterally. But that's the first time I've heard of that. — Klay Hall

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. — Phil Klay

Maybe you didn't understand American foreign policy or why we were at war. Maybe you never will. But it doesn't matter. You held up your hand and said, "I'm willing to die for these worthless civilians. — Phil Klay

Sometimes macho language is to mask things people are not ready to deal with. — 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 to come in and change people's culture. — 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

War is too strange to process alone. — Phil Klay

As a rule, I do not approve of messing around with coffee. No sugar, no milk, no chocolate, hazelnuts, cinnamon, no nothing ... Just drink it black, the way God does — Klay Thompson

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.' — Phil Klay

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. — Phil Klay

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

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. — Phil Klay

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. — Phil Klay

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

All That You Can Be'?" I said. "I don't know. That was the slogan for me, growing up. And then it was 'Army of One,' which I never understood, and then it was 'Army Strong,' which is about as good a slogan as 'Fire Hot' or 'Snickers Tasty' or 'Herpes Bad.' A better slogan would be, 'You Can't Afford College Without Us. — Phil Klay

there are circumstances that trump personal feelings. — Phil Klay

Now that had worked very successfully at Pixar, and he ended up adding one at Walt Disney Animation and one at DTS. So, I'm part of that Brain Trust where I sit in on all things creative for the whole studio, but especially in the Planes area. — Klay Hall

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. — Phil Klay

Bob, I quickly learned, had an existential view of the Iraq war. — Phil Klay

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. — Phil Klay

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

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

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. — Phil Klay

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

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. — Phil Klay

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. — Phil Klay

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

If we fetishize trauma as incommunicable, then survivors are trapped - unable to feel truly known by their nonmilitary friends and family. — Phil Klay

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. — Phil Klay

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. — Phil Klay

Going to war is a rare experience in American culture, so it's easy for simple notions to gain a lot of weight. The reality is always more complex. — Phil Klay

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

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. — Phil Klay