Wars damage the civilian society as much as they damage the enemy. Soldiers never get over it.

And the ideal travel writer is consumed not just with a will to know. He is also moved by a powerful will to teach.

A more or less accurate measure of class in America is TV size: the bigger your TV, the lower your class.

The balls used in top class games are generally smaller than those used in others.

Chickenshit refers to behavior that makes military life worse than it need be: petty harassment of the weak by the strong; open scrimmage for power and authority and prestige; sadism thinly disguised as necessary discipline; a constant 'paying off of old scores'; and insistence on the letter rather than the spirit of ordinances.

Understanding the past requires pretending that you don't know the present. It requires feeling its own pressure on your pulses without any ex post facto illumination.

Those who fought know a secret about themselves, and it is not very nice.