There is more to military units than hardware. There is the character of the unit's personnel: their strengths, experience, and knowledge, their ability to get along and work together amid the horrors of the battlefield. There is an almost undefinable quality. That quality is the Marine Corps' secret weapon. Their edge. That quality is their ethos.

"Literature" is written material that, 100 years after the death of the author, is forced upon high school students.

I do not over-intellectualize the production process. I try to keep it simple: Tell the damned story.

The good old days are now.

Jack looked out the window as they passed the Mormon temple, just outside the beltway near Connecticut Avenue. A decidedly odd-looking building, it had grandeur with its marble columns and gilt spires. The beliefs represented by that impressive structure seemed curious to Ryan, a lifelong Catholic, but the people who held them were honest and hardworking, and fiercely loyal to their country, because they believed in what America stood for.

That's the ultimate pornography. There's nothing more pornographic than glorifying war.

In the Soviet Union it was illegal to take a photograph of a train station. Look what happened to them. They tried to classify everything.