Steve Perry

"Droc was not particularly religious himself. If the gods responded to entreaties, they had never demonstrated it to him. Better his time was spent doing something that might work."

"Never felt so alive as you did after you came out of a battle in one piece. And if you were dead? You wouldn’t feel that..."

"“So here we have the basic ingredients in the art of distraction,” Gunny said to Singh, as they walked toward the rendezvous point. “When in doubt, wait until dark, turn off the lights, and blow shit …"

"Nobody is a born killer. And nobody ever forgets the first time they get laid, nor the first time they spike somebody."

"Any type of violence initiated by one intelligent being against another was wrong. Killing violence was worse than any other kind. How could it be condoned? In his brief moment of cosmic bliss, Khadaj…"

"He thought about the killing he’d seen, about his final participation in the slaughter on Maro. It still made him want to vomit, the thought of all those people ceasing to exist. Many religions had it…"

"He understood the phenomenon, of how almost dying made you appreciate what life had to offer. And it was a potent drug, that feeling. Battle was not glorious. But surviving it? That was."

"Young soldiers had a lot of expectations and fantasies about how it would be and what they would do and feel. Invariably wrong, those expectations."