"I was a good student at West Point- probably not as good as I could have been or should have been, but I performed well enough there and in the eight years afterward, serving with two cavalry squadrons, that I was selected for graduate school and a teaching assignment back at West Point. I chose to pursue a master's degree in English literature at Duke University. Even in retrospect, I wouldn't suggest that at the time I was passionate about getting an advanced degree in English. I was passionate about going to graduate school in some discipline other than engineering, my undergraduate major, and I really wanted to go back to West Point to teach. The English department provided a path for me to accomplish those goals."

“Not all of us have a moral compass on our desks, but we need to have one in our hearts. Without it, we won't live a life in which character matters.”

“To Deanie, who's been there every step of the way.”

“Israel went to extraordinary lengths to limit collateral damage and civilian casualties.”

“There are a lot of memories in this book. I hope they are not too self-aggrandizing. I certainly don't mean them to be. Rather, I intend them to argue that life is a journey that must be felt to be meaningful, that it will always surprise us, and that it is an opportunity meant to be experienced by participation, not by observation. I intend them to show that history finds us, not the other way around. And since we can't know which of us history will find, we should each do all we can to prepare by living a life of character and consequence. I intend them to illustrate that we all- leaders and followers alike- have obligations to each other. Each chapter is a piece of a puzzle, no one piece more important than the other.”

“There's no place as beautiful as West Point in the spring, summer and fall and no place as dismal as West Point in January and February. In fact, cadets commonly refer to this time of year at the Academy as "gloom period.”

“There are people in our lives who may know more about what's good for us than we do.”