I’ve stopped war reporting. I realized that I’d answered all of my questions about war and about myself.

Who wants a life of ease? And who wants a life in the office that you hate, and who wants to play golf?

If hardship brought out the worst in people, the human race wouldn't have survived. Right after 9/11, for instance, the murder rate actually went down in New York City. In World War II during the Blitz, the civilians of London were bombed almost every night for six months, but psychiatric admissions declined.

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

Right now, America doesn't ask us to do anything besides pay taxes. We don't even have to vote. But as psychologists will tell you, when you have to sacrifice for something, you value it more. What about national service for young people? Everybody between 18 and 24 could spend a year or two working for this country in some capacity. It'd be an amazing thing. And it would mix this country racially, culturally, economically.

The Army might screw you and your girlfriend might dump you and the enemy might kill you, but the shared commitment to safeguard one another’s lives is unnegotiable and only deepens with time. The willingness to die for another person is a form of love that even religions fail to inspire, and the experience of it changes a person profoundly.

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.