“Czechs simply dont say theyre going camping or spending time outdoors. They say, in Czech, that they are going into the nature as though nature, proda, is beyond a place in the woods or other forms...”

“A wave of saudade swept over me as I realized home never existed at all. The concept of home felt far from my reach, and I felt sick with longing.”

“Adversity has the remarkable ability of introducing the real you to yourself.”

“The most insidious of our country, the greediest and highest rung of our socioeconomic ladder, line their pockets with misappropriated funds as military personnel and hordes of civilians are maimed...”

“There are people who come home from war and want to talk about the pain, but no one wants to listen; there are others who want to keep silent and repress the memories, and all their family and frie...”

“I left a piece of my soul that will always rightfully belong in the desert.”

“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. ...”

“I would listen with growing outrage as hypocritical and obtuse American senators made all these demands of Iraqi legislators and yet themselves could not even pass budgets or appropriations bills, ...”

“Even in times of trauma, we try to maintain a sense of normality until we no longer can. That, my friends, is called surviving. Not healing. We never become whole again ... we are survivors. If you...”

“Everyone around me was allowed, permitted to fall apart; yet I had to think twice. I couldn't bear to take another dip into an ocean of solitude for another taste of ostracization. I felt I would die.”

“You've been so used to fighting Wars with a gun in your hand that you forget to put it down. Not every fight requires a weapon of some kind, and not everything is a fight.”

“Running, you should know, is a kind of stillness.”