If you're going to write about war, which my books are about, wars are nasty things. I think it's sort of a cheap, easy way out to write a war story in which no one ultimately dies.
Sentiment: NEGATIVE
War is tragedy. The great war stories are tragedies. It's the failure of diplomacy. 'War and Peace,' 'A Farewell to Arms,' 'For Whom the Bell Tolls.' Those are some of the greatest tragedies.
If you're going to write about war, the ugly side is inevitable. Suffering and death are obviously part of war.
There is nothing glamorous or romantic about war. It's mostly about random pointless death and misery.
One of the reasons it's important for me to write about war is I really think that the concept of war, the specifics of war, the nature of war, the ethical ambiguities of war, are introduced too late to children. I think they can hear them, understand them, know about them, at a much younger age without being scared to death by the stories.
War is terrible. There is nothing romantic about war.
What ultimately happened is that my country had a war. I think it would be extraordinary, as a writer, not to want to write about that.
Every writer has his writing technique - what he can and can't do to describe something like war or history. I'm not good at writing about those things, but I try because I feel it is necessary to write that kind of thing.
I've read a lot of war writing, even World War I writing, the British war poetry of Wilfred Owen and Siegfried Sassoon, Robert Graves's memoir 'Goodbye to All That,' and a civilian memoir, 'Testament of Youth,' by Vera Brittain.
I can't envision an honest war novel that left war in a positive light.
The stories from World War I are worse than anything I have ever read.
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