Then somebody suggested I should write about the war, and I said I didn't know anything about the war. I did not understand anything about it. I didn't see how I could write it.
Sentiment: NEGATIVE
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.
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.
I don't think I'd call myself a war writer, but I would probably say I'm a writer who has written about war.
I write about my life and my own experience, but I also write about things that I have no knowledge of whatsoever.
I'm a writer. I don't support any war. That's my principle.
You write about what you know, and you write about what you want to know.
You can't sit down and decide what you want to write about.
I didn't write. I just wandered about.
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.
I wanted to write about the Korean War, but I had no entry into it that made the kind of sense it needs to make for a novelist.
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