“Other people are talking about writing books about my life, or about some of the things I’ve done. I find it strange, but I also feel it’s my life and my story, and I guess I better be the one to get it on paper the way it actually happened.”

I thought I should be stronger than was possible.

I don’t shoot people with Korans. I’d like to, but I don’t.

I really don’t care what people think of me.

War is hell. Hollywood fantasizes about it and makes it look good; war sucks.

There’s no reason someone who has fought for their country should be homeless or jobless.

I’m just trying to be the me that I am and not all of this other crap. I just want to be the family man, and if somehow I can make the money to get my ranch and get the hell away from everybody else, that would be awesome.

I really don’t care what people think of me. I’ve got my family. I’ve got my friends. Yes, I have been trained to be a little more aggressive if I need to be, but I don’t go around thumping people.

Savage, despicable evil. That’s what we were fighting in Iraq.

Great way to fight a war – be prepared to defend yourself for winning.

The rules are drawn up by lawyers who are trying to protect the admirals and generals from the politicians; they’re not written by people who are worried about the guys on the ground getting shot.

But in that backroom or whatever it is when God confronts me with my sins, I do not believe any of the kills I had during the war will be among them. Everyone I shot was evil. I had good cause on every shot. They all deserved to die.

I don’t know if I’m the best of the best. But I did know that if I quit, I wouldn’t be.

In the end, my story, in Iraq and afterward, is about more than just killing people or even fighting for my country. It’s about being a man. And it’s about love as well as hate.

Maybe war isn’t really fun, but I certainly was enjoying it.

Just because war is hell doesn’t mean you can’t have a little fun.

It’s not a problem taking out someone who wants your people dead. That’s not a problem at all.

There is no beginning, no middle, no end, no suspense, no moral, no causes, no effects. What we love in our books are the depths of many marvelous moments seen all at one time.

Many a book is like a key to unknown chambers within the castle of one’s own self.

If emotional pain or problems have cropped up in your life, you must insist on getting closure. Closure means you don’t carry the problem or the pain. You address the issue, then you slam shut the book and put it away.

It hurts that I was just one page in the book of your life. But what hurts more is knowing you’ll revise that chapter someday, and you’ll erase me completely.

I am being frank about myself in this book. I tell of my first mistake on page 850.

The novel is the one bright book of life. Books are not life. They are only tremulations on the ether. But the novel as a tremulation can make the whole man alive tremble.

People say to me so often, ‘Jane how can you be so peaceful when everywhere around you people want books signed, people are asking these questions and yet you seem peaceful,’ and I always answer that it is the peace of the forest that I carry inside.

Books are a narcotic.