You can get what you want. Never sell out. Don't break. Don't weaken. Don't let the kindness of strangers be your salvation, for it is no salvation at all. Unless you sleep alone, you sleep with the enemy. Never come out of the storm. On the other hand, maybe you should. You don't have what it takes to go the hard way. Come out of the cold and sit by the fire. Let them warm you with the smiles and promise of friendship's fortune. Lose your edge. A soft body and chained mind suit you. Chances are you don't have what it takes to walk the frozen trail. Stay home and relax.

When you're going into an employment environment that looks pretty scary, it is easy to lose your moral compass, your decency, your sense of civility and your sense of community.

There is a concerted effort to keep you and me, you know, the people, away from what it [war] really looks like, 'cause when you're selling war, when it's such a big industry. What they don't tell you is the rest of it and the down side of it. And so obviously there is a lot of money and a lot of time and effort being spent on that campaign "perpetual war for perpetual peace".

If American forces leave Afghanistan, the Taliban is going to do what to America? Don't say you're worried about what they will do to the Afghan people. If that was America's concern, America's operational presence there would be much different.

If the truth is told how I want to be remembered... as someone who cared. Someone who worked really hard and someone who didn't sit around.

A gun in your hand makes a fool out of you. A gun in your hand makes a target out of me.

Sometimes I would get invited to a party or to go out to dinner by one of them and I would decline. Part of me wanted to go, but those kind of outings always made me feel even more alienated than usual. Hearing them talk made me feel lonely and hateful at the same time. Lonely because I didn't fit in, never did. When I was reminded, it hurt. And hateful because it reaffirmed what I already knew, that I was alone and on the outside.