It was all absurd, without reason or meaning. People who didn't know each other were going to kill each other over a hill none of them cared about

Everything is touched by the holy when it is in the presence of death.

Once we recognize our shadow's existence we must resist the enticing step of going with its flow.

For every veteran who goes through a divorce, a wife goes through one, too. For every veteran alone in the basement, there is a wife upstairs, bewildered, isolated and in despair from the dark clouds of war that hangs over family life.

I knew many Marines had done brave deeds that no one saw and for which they got no medals at all. I was having a very hard time carrying those medals and didnt have the insight or maturity to know what to do with my combination of guilt and pride.

We mistakenly assume that bodily survival has a higher precedence than ego survival. This is simply not generally true. Ego will happily destroy the body for its own sake. Look at overweight executives headed for heart attacks on the way to getting their pictures in Fortune or anorexic models suffering slow starvation on their way to getting their pictures in Vogue. Protecting ego is the general case.

It was all absurd, without reason or meaning. People who didn't know each other were going to kill each other over a hill none of them cared about