I was interested in the war part of 'Star Wars,' so I started reading about what it's like to go to war, what that does to you psychically, about the adrenaline and the rush.
Sentiment: POSITIVE
I don't go to war for the adrenaline rush. I cover wars because that's what I've ended up doing.
'Star Wars' is fun, its exciting, its inspirational, and people respond to that. It's what they want.
We have a tendency to think of war as this quasi-mystical thing, and that interpretation flattens the experience - by using different perspectives, I wanted to open a place for readers to compare and contrast, to make judgments, to engage.
Some of the most exciting moments in 'Star Wars' are when you're cutting between stories and you're building this momentum.
War is complicated and intense, and it takes time and thoughts to understand what it was.
I don't only long for the thrill of being in the middle of a war, I must understand it; I must make other people understand.
I'm not interested in doing 'Star Wars.' It's an amazing movie, but that's not my gift. I tell the stories that I tell that relate to the people who love what I do. That is the place and the path that I know I am supposed to be on. The minute I try and go do something else, it will be amazing to watch how quickly that don't work.
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.
The word war itself has a kind of glazing abstraction to it that conjures up bombs and bullets and so on, whereas my goal is to try to, so much as I can, capture the heart and the stomach and the back of the throat of readers who can lie in bed at night and participate in a story.
There is nothing glamorous or romantic about war. It's mostly about random pointless death and misery.