The SEALs place a premium on brute strength, but there's an even bigger premium on speed. That's speed through the water, speed over the ground, and speed of thought. There's no prizes for gleaming a set of well-oiled muscles in Coronado. Bulk just makes you slow, especially in soft sand, and that's what we had to tackle every day of our lives, mile after mile.

There's a storm inside of us, a burning river, a drive. You push yourself further than anyone could think possible. You are never out of the fight.

We've trained and trained for a reason: to be better at the craft of war than our enemy, to use our skill to perform the mission, and to accept the risks. As American warriors, it's our obligation to protect the innocent. And that means, sometimes, that we're the ones who need to be put on the disadvantaged side of the threat cycle.

Fear is a force that sharpens your senses. Being afraid is a state of paralysis in which you can't do anything.

Service is selflessness--the opposite of the lifestyle that we see so much of in America today. The things that entertain us don't often lift us up, or show us as the people we can rise up to become. The people who appear in this book--and others who did things I can't talk about--are my role models. They quietly live out the idea expressed in the Bible (John 15:13): "Greater love has no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends.

You always have to strive

Don't let your thoughts run away with you, don't start planning to bail out because you're worried about the future and how much you can take. Don't look ahead to the pain. Just get through the day.