The only thing that makes battle psychologically tolerable is the brotherhood among soldiers. You need each other to get by.

If you get an infection, you get a fever; the fever is your body dealing with the infection. If you get traumatized, your mind and your brain have a reaction to that trauma. If you're not dreaming about it, something's probably wrong.

The attacks of 9/11 came out of Afghanistan. It was a failed state, a rogue nation. That's why al Qaeda was there in the first place.

There's no reason to do anything twice, and certainly no reason to do something that almost killed you.

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.

I went to Afghanistan in '96 to write about terrorist training camps south of Jalalabad and Tora Bora, in the mountains. I was there right before the Taliban took over, literally a few weeks before they took Kabul. The frontline wasn't terribly active, but it was definitely there. And they swept into power.