In some ways, risk-taking is the ultimate act of self-indulgence, an obscene insult to the preciousness of life. And yet, how can one dismiss something that persists despite every reasonable theory that it shouldn’t?
An adventure is a situation where the outcome is not entirely within your control. It is up to fate, in other words.
The army consists of the first infantry division and eight million replacements.
Combat isn’t where you might die – though that does happen – it’s where you find out whether you get to keep on living. Don’t underestimate the power of that revelation. Don’t underestimate the things young men will wager in order to play that game one more time.
Maybe the ultimate wound is the one that makes you miss the war you got it in.
All journalists hope that their work will inspire a broader conversation. I think that’s just what journalism is.
I don’t think journalists in World War II were objective about the Nazis, and I don’t think they should have been.
I was surprised how open and unguarded the military was. I expected more scrutiny, more supervision from command.
At 19, your brain hasn’t finished wiring itself. So the first time you have a good friend die, most people don’t go through that at 19. Soldiers do. They’re facing life in this accelerated, compressed form, and a lot of times, they’re not ready for it.
Bad news is dramatic. It makes good TV. If there’s a firefight on the same day that a school opens up, the media will show the firefight even though the school is way more important and will affect the community for much longer.
Firemen don’t talk about whether a burning warehouse is worth saving.
No matter how many people you kill, using a machine gun in battle is not a war crime because it does not cause unnecessary suffering; it simply performs its job horrifyingly well.
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.
Who wants a life of ease? And who wants a life in the office that you hate, and who wants to play golf?
My wife, Daniela, and I live in an old house from 1810 with three fireplaces at the end of a dead-end dirt road on Cape Cod, so I turn the trees into firewood for us and a friend of mine sells the rest.
No one will remember that President Obama supported the Arab Spring if it eventually fails and the region collapses back into the political Dark Ages. If we actively engage these movements with advice, with money, and, when necessary, with military force, then we get a vote in how it all turns out.
I’ve stopped war reporting. I realized that I’d answered all of my questions about war and about myself.
I hope I get married one day.
I think, unfortunately, we live in a world where people attack other people and I think a legitimate rationale for war is the saving of human life, the saving of lives of people who cannot defend themselves.
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.