I had grown up during Vietnam. I had no connections to the U.S. military, and I had a pretty cynical default opinion about the U.S. military.

War is life multiplied by some number that no one has ever heard of.

The only thing that makes battle psychologically tolerable is the brotherhood among soldiers. You need each other to get by.

Maybe the ultimate wound is the one that makes you miss the war you got it in.

An adventure is a situation where the outcome is not entirely within your control. It is up to fate, in other words

No matter how many people you kill, using a machine gun in battle is not a war crime because it does not cause unnecessary suffering; it simply performs its job horrifyingly well.

War is a lot of things and it's useless to pretend that exciting isn't one of them. (pg. 144)

I don't think journalists in World War II were objective about the Nazis, and I don't think they should have been.

The army consists of the first infantry division and eight million replacements.

All journalists hope that their work will inspire a broader conversation. I think that's just what journalism is.

Firemen don't talk about whether a burning warehouse is worth saving.

Vultures pick the meat clean off a bone. Guilt eats at the marrow, leaving a man hollow.

For Satan finds some mischief still For idle hands to do.

There is no hunting like the hunting of man, and those who have hunted armed men long enough and liked it, never care for anything else thereafter.

Walk the street with us into history. Get off the sidewalk.

Caring comes from being able to put yourself in the position of the other person.

I hear what people say, I read all the reviews, all the blogs, and I am always curious to hear it, because you can't always listen to the good press, you have to hear the bad press, too.

I'm not married. I hope to be someday so I can stop exercising.

Using, as an excuse, others' failure of common sense is in itself a failure of common sense.

...if you expect people to try to do things your way, you're going to have to give some hints as to what that way is.

A lot of fairy tales are thinly disguised hostility raps against parents. Kids know that they can't make it on their own, that if they were left alone, they would die.