Take risks ... be willing to put your mind and your spirit, your time and your energy, your stomach and your emotions on the line. To search for a safe place, to search for an end to a rainbow, is to search for a place that you will hate once you find it. The soul must be nourished along with the bank account and the resume. The best nourishment for any soul is to create your own risks.

As I say, I'm a discourse advocate. What form it comes is less important to me than the fact that there is discourse.

I'm not in the being-annoyed business.

We have increasingly fewer and fewer journalists who have any military experience and understand what life is like in the military and in combat.

On a daily basis there are some huge ones that are, sure, from time to time, but it is helping the reader sort through all this sort of gray stuff out there.

Most of the stories I have covered in 45 years have been gray stories.

My Marine experience helped shape who I am now personally and professionally, and I am grateful for that on an almost daily basis.