He lay before God as a woman opens herself to a man, with legs apart, stomach exposed, arms open. But unlike some women, he did not have the inner strength that allowed them to do such a thing without fear. There was no woman’s strength in Mellas at all.

Quitting is unthinkable and pain is just weakness leaving the body

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 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.

The Marine Corps taught me how to kill, but it didn't teach me how to deal with killing.

Victory in combat is like sex with a prostitute. For a moment you forget everything in the sudden physical rush, but then you have to pay your money to the woman showing you the door. You see the dirt on the walls and your sorry image in the mirror.

And I think that it's - the military has actually made improvements, so people are considering post-traumatic stress disorder as, at the least, a possible psychological problem. You know, when I was in Vietnam, it was just considered malingering. And we're making progress.