"

I didn't get into writing to make money or get famous or any of that. I got into it to hit hearts, and man, when I get letters not just from the soldi...more

"

He wanted to heat up the truth, to make it burn so hot that you would feel exactly what he felt.

"

And in the end, really, there's nothing much to say about a true war story, except maybe "Oh.

"

A lie, sometimes, can be truer than the truth, which is why fiction gets written.

"

Writing doesn’t get easier with experience. The more you know, the harder it is to write.

"

A good piece of fiction, in my view, does not offer solutions. Good stories deal with our moral struggles, our uncertainties, our dreams, our blunders...more

"

Stories can save us.

"

Stories are for joining the past to the future.

"

In any war story, but especially a true one, it's difficult to separate what happened from what seemed to happen. What seems to happen becomes its own...more

"

What stories can do, I guess, is make things present.

"

The thing about a story is that you dream it as you tell it, hoping that others might then dream along with you, and in this way memory and imaginatio...more

"

What stories can do, I guess, is make things present.I can look at things I never looked at. I can attach faces to grief and love and pity and God. I ...more

"

I'm skimming across the surface of my own history, moving fast, riding the melt beneath the blades, doing loops and spins, and when I take a high leap...more

"

Forty-three years old, and the war occurred half a lifetime ago, and yet the remembering makes it now. And sometimes remembering will lead to a story,...more

"

That’s what fiction is for. It’s for getting at the truth when the truth isn’t sufficient for the truth.