Learn to write the same way you learn to play golf. You do it and keep doing it until you get it right.

The good old days are now.

There is an old saying: In history nothing is true but the names and dates. In fiction everything is true but the names and dates. The difference between reality and fiction? Fiction has to make sense.

I've made up stuff that's turned out to be real, that's the spooky part.

Keep at it! The one talent that's indispensable to a writer is persistence. You must write the book, else there is no book. It will not finish itself. Do not try to commit art. Just tell the damned story.

Man is a creature of hope and invention, both of which belie the idea that things cannot be changed.

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.