I am very much interested in getting parents to read to children, and trying to get people mentoring children. If I can do both I'll be happy.

I joined the army on my seventeenth birthday, full of the romance of war after having read a lot of World War I British poetry and having seen a lot of post-World War II films. I thought the romantic presentations of war influenced my joining and my presentation of war to my younger siblings.

I know what falling off the cliff means. I know from being considered a very bright kid to being considered like a moron and dropping out of school.

Each generation seems to invent its own reasons for war.

My life is not packaged, Not tidy. There are leftover strands and jagged Edges that cut even my friends.

I talk to myself out loud at times, and feel embarrassed when people overhear me.

One of the lessons learned during the Vietnam War was that the depiction of wounded soldiers, of coffins stacked higher than their living guards, had a negative effect on the viewing public. The military in Iraq specifically banned the photographing of wounded soldiers and coffins, thus sanitizing this terrible and bloody conflict.