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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.

I have never known a novel that was good enough to be good in spite of its being adapted to the author's political views.

There is nothing glamorous or romantic about war. It's mostly about random pointless death and misery.

If you write a novel where war is nothing but hell and no one experiences excitement or cracks a dark joke, then you're not actually admitting the full experience.

'Undertones of War' by Edmund Blunden seems to get less attention than the memoirs of Siegfried Sassoon and Robert Graves, but it is a great book.

Many of the best films made about war have come out after the wars have ended. People need a period of time to reflect on them.

War is terrible. There is nothing romantic about war.

After each of my books about the war has appeared, I thought it might be the last, but I've stopped saying that to myself. There are just too many stories left to tell - in fact, more all the time.

War is wretched beyond description, and only a fool or a fraud could sentimentalize its cruel reality.

I don't think I would have written a combat novel if I had just had peacetime military training. I think, in fact, I probably would have remained a poet and just written a short story every now and then.