If you shell a military base and happen to kill civilians, you have not committed a war crime; if you deliberately target cities and towns, you have.

Who wants a life of ease? And who wants a life in the office that you hate, and who wants to play golf?

Maybe the ultimate wound is the one that makes you miss the war you got it in.

It's fun to have money, but the more money I get, the less interesting it becomes. If you don't have very much, you have to think about it. If you are starving, you become interested in food. If you are struggling to pay the bills, money becomes tragically important.

I don't think people would climb mountains or jump off bridges with parachutes or kayak Class V rapids if those things didn't offer the brief and horrible illusion of imminent death. They would just be complicated, time-consuming endeavors that we'd steer well clear of because they got in the way of real life.

War is a lot of things and it's useless to pretend that exciting isn't one of them. (pg. 144)

I was surprised how open and unguarded the military was. I expected more scrutiny, more supervision from command.