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

The time for debilitating fear is before and after the mission.

War is society's dirty work, usually done by kids cleaning up failures perpetrated by adults.

I mean, if you're proud of what you've done when you've served in the military, well then we call that bragging. And if you are unhappy about what happened, we call that complaining. And so what are you going to do?

I don't want any romantics to go into the military. I'm not a pacifist. I think we need a military, and the better one we have, the better off we are. I don't want kids going in there thinking that it's John Wayne on Iwo Jima. That's not healthy.

Really important books to me are the classics. I try very hard to read them well - you know, especially once I got serious about writing.

This nation should be less worried about putting the Vietnam syndrome behind us than restarting the World War II victory syndrome that resulted in the Vietnam syndrome in the first place.