"Combat is like crack cocaine. It's an enormous high, but it has enormous costs. Any sane person would never do crack. Combat is like that. You're scared, you're terrified, you're miserable, but then the fighting starts, and suddenly everything is at stake, your life, your friend's lives. It's almost transcendence because you're no longer a person. You lose that sense, you're just the platoon, and the platoon can't be beat. And not to mention there's a savage joy in overcoming your enemy, just a savage joy. And I think we make a big mistake if we say, 'oh war is hell'. We all know the 'war is hell' story—it is—but there's an enormously exhilarating part of it."

"Look, I could tell you about — and I’m not going to do it, because I didn’t want to bring it up — but I could tell you about events that took place. And I said things like, “You’ll never do that again…"

"Can one be fully human without experiencing tragedy? The only tragedy there is in the world is ignorance; all evil comes from that. The only tragedy there is in the world is unwakefulness and unawaren…"

"I'll go backstage, before a show, and everyone's getting dressed and ready and everything else. And you know, no men are anywhere. And I'm allowed to go in because I'm the owner of the pageant and the…"

"An internal combustion engine is 'clearly' a system ; we subscribe to this opinion because we know that the engine was designed precisely to be a system. It is, however, possible to envisage that some…"