“Its a powerful moment, when you discover a vocabulary exists for something youd thought incommunicably unique. Personally, I felt it reading Joseph Conrads Lord Jim. I have friends whove found them...”

“I've worked hard to remember it...The problem is I'm not sure what's real memory and what's my brain filling in details, like a guy whose heart stops and he thinks he sees a bright light. Except I'...”

“And that was my homecoming. It was fine, I guess. Getting back feels like your first breath after nearly drowning. Even if it hurts, it's good.”

“I don't believe in any Greatest Generation. I believe in great events. They sweep ordinary people up, expose them to extremes of human behavior and unimaginable tests of integrity and courage, and ...”

“War is an arena for the display of courage and virtue. Or war is politics by other means. War is a quasi-mystical experience where you get in touch with the real. There are millions of narratives w...”

“I got to travel around Anbar Province, had a great group of Marines who worked for me who traveled around Anbar Province. I got to hang out with a lot of different types of Marines and soldiers and...”

“War is what happens when language fails.”

“Never think that war, no matter how necessary, nor how justified, is not a crime.”

“The world is full enough of hurts and mischances without wars to multiply them.”

“Nothing forces us to knowWhat we do not want to knowExcept pain”

“Doesn't it seem that it is always by chance that these things happen, or is it because of the generosity of a shared knowledge of suffering that allows for it?”

“Wisdom is not making life any harder than it has to be.”

“Maybe nature is fundamentally ugly, chaotic and complicated. But if it's like that, then I want out.”

“There are no ugly women, only lazy ones.”

“The price one pays for pursuing any profession, or calling, is an intimate knowledge of its ugly side.”