“Maybe it's time to stop being a soldier and go home to be a father. And a husband for Deanna. I'm not sure how.”

“I will always hate war, but will be forever proud of mine.”

“Evan no longer tells people I fight bad guys for a living. When asked, he tells his friends that his dad talks on the phone a lot and vacuums on occasion.”

“Evan stares at me.I try to hug him. He takes a step back. I pause, my heart in my throat. Ive got to reach out to him, let myself be vulnerable. I find the courage, but he backs up again.You cant g...”

“I am a Christian, but my time in Iraq has convinced me that God doesn't want to hear from me anymore. I've done things that He can never forgive. I've done them consciously. I've made decisions I m...”

“A cavalryman's horse should be smarter than he is. But the horse must never be alowed to know this.”

“Above all, he loathed men who beat women; for, real men didnt exercise their strength on frail creatures, they joined the army and put Shazarias enemies in their graves.”

“Dad, how do soldiers killing each other solve the world's problems?”

“Love never dies a natural death. It dies because we don't know how to replenish its source. It dies of blindness and errors and betrayals. It dies of illness and wounds; it dies of weariness, of wi...”

“My dear,Find what you love and let it kill you.Let it drain you of your all. Let it cling onto your back and weigh you down into eventual nothingness.Let it kill you and let it devour your remains....”

“If you gave someone your heart and they died, did they take it with them? Did you spend the rest of forever with a hole inside you that couldn't be filled?”

“Ridding Iraq of weapons of mass destruction. That was the whole idea, right? Thats why we went. I am reluctant to let that fact disappear down the memory hole, because if as the war ends, or at lea...”

“Saddam's politics was the politics of the thug, of violence from the outset of his reign. Realism suggests that some people are not going to be tractable in response to purely peaceable overtures. ...”

“To stay alive, you have to keep moving. Running, relocating, driving, doing everything in your power to stay in motion and make it to safety.”