For the past weeks I'd been reacting. That was no way to win. To win, you take the initiative. You instigate the action. You make the opponent react to you.

Conventional wisdom is no wisdom at all. Conventional wisdom is taking somebody else's word for the way things are It's the followers of this world who rely on assumption. Not the leaders.

I ask my children (all of them) to be what they want to be; just be the best they can at what they choose.

Pain was their body's way of telling them that they'd pushed themselves to their limits - which was exactly where they were supposed to be.

For the past weeks I'd been reacting. That was no way to win. To win, you take the initiative. You instigate the action. You make the opponent react to you.

Have character, but don't be a character.

When you fight, you don't fight for abstract values like the flag, or the nation, or democracy. You fight for your buddy. You fight to keep him alive, and he fights to keep you alive, and you go on that way, day after day, battle after battle. And when one of your buddies dies, something inside you dies as well. But you go on. You fight, so that his death isn't meaningless, his sacrifice isn't for nothing.