How do men act on a sinking ship? Do they hold each other? Do they pass around the whisky? Do they cry?

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

The cause doesn't have to be righteous and battle doesn't have to be winnable; but over and over again throughout history, men have chosen to die in battle with their friends rather than to flee on their own and survive.

One interesting thing I found was that if you take an affluent modern society and collapse it during a crisis, like a war or a natural disaster, people begin relating in a more ancient, organic way. They're functioning in small interdependent groups and putting others first. And another irony is that even in terrible times, cooperating makes people feel good.

In my eyes Marlantes has become the pre-eminent literary voice on war of our generation. He is a natural storyteller and a deeply profound thinker who not only illuminates war for civilians, but also offers a kind of spiritual guidance to vets themselves. As this generation of warriors comes home, they will be enormously helped by what Marlantes has written. I’m sure he will literally save lives.

War is life multiplied by some number that no one has ever heard of.

There is some evidence that average wave heights are slowly rising, and that freak waves of eighty or ninety feet are becoming more common. Wave heights off the coast of England have risen an average of 25 percent over the past couple of decades, which converts to a twenty-foot increase in the highest waves over the next half century. One cause may be the tightening of environmental laws, which has reduced the amount of oil flushed into the oceans by oil tankers.