There are more good people than bad people, and overall there’s more that’s good in the world than there is that’s bad. We just need to hear about it, we just need to see it.

I’m clinging to one last thought: pain is the harbinger of hope. You have to be alive to feel pain. If you are alive, then you have purpose. If you have purpose, then you have hope.

In total this journey will take five flights and fifty-five hours, but in reality it began four decades and two generations ago when my uncle died in Vietnam.

I felt so much pride, so much love. You get a handful of days like this in a lifetime. Take in every minute. They’ll be over soon enough, and you never know what tomorrow will bring.

A son for a flag is a lot of sacrifice.

The meeting began well, meaning it had the potential for being short.

I felt like I should salute. If only I knew how.

Military life is hard, even cruel—especially for the kids.

We all lose people. We all have to live in the aftermath. It’s how we move forward that counts, but sometimes we are tethered to something in our past that won’t let us move forward.

This is who I was, before I was dead. When I cared, when I was relentless.

We could never go back to how things were on the day before 9/11, but maybe I could go back to who I was.

She said that that was the disadvantage of bringing creatures into the house: one grew used to them, and then, one had the upset of their loss.

Whatever you are trying to avoid won't go away until you confront it.

The civilized man has a moral obligation to be skeptical. . . . Any man who for one moment abandons or suspends the questioning spirit has for that moment betrayed humanity.

But I remember more dearly autumn afternoons in bottoms that lay intensely silent under old great trees

I have made more documentaries in my time than I think I care to remember, though I am immensely proud of all my work.

The critics tend to forget their own answers after a while

All experience helps when you write.

If you follow your bliss...the life that you ought to be living is the one you are living.

It always bothers me to see people writing RIP when a person dies. It just feels so insincere and like a cop out. To me, RIP is the microwave dinner of posthumous honours.

Everyday was another day spent waiting. Every night was another night when she might meet someone who would recognize her true worth.