Eric Blehm · 256 pages
Rating: (11.3K votes)
“Modest, conventional expectations weren't enough to lure Adam Brown away from the power of drug addiction that ensnared him. Instead, the college dropout already in his mid-twenties found only the big, near-impossible dream of being a Navy SEAL captivating enough to consistently draw him to different choices.”
“Life is not a journey to the grave with the intention of arriving safely in a pretty and preserved body, but rather to skid in broadside, thoroughly used up, totally worn out, and loudly proclaiming, ‘Wow … what a ride.’ ” Billy liked it so much he jotted it down in”
“Life is not a journey to the grave with the intention of arriving safely in a pretty and preserved body, but rather to skid in broadside, thoroughly used up, totally worn out, and loudly proclaiming, ‘Wow … what a ride.’ ”
“You gotta do what you gotta do, and when you’re done, you’ll be stronger.”
“Tender Warrior,” Adam replied and showed John the cover. “You can read it; I’m almost done. Check this out,” he said, thumbing backward through the pages. “It was written by Stu Weber, a Vietnam veteran, Special Forces. He became a chaplain.”
“And he always stood up for the underdog--never realizing that because of his size he was one himself.”
“And he talks about the 5 percent, which is Special Operations guys, and how, clinically, we’re all borderline sociopaths. But in my mind we’re not the ones that are messed up; it’s the other 95 percent of the population. We run toward the sound of gunfire. Like the fireman who, when everybody else is running this way, is running into the flames. A cop, anyone who does that sort of work, is in that 5 percent, that personality that we need to get that job done. And be able to do that job and rationalize it, religiously or country or however you deal with it, say, ‘Okay, that was my job, that’s why I did that. But now I’m back and I’m fine.’ ”
“There’re a couple of books that discuss this,” Heath said to his friend. “On Killing [by Dave Grossman] is a good one. He writes about cops, and he discusses troops from the Civil War all the way up to now.”
“Well, horses take a lot of work, they’re dirty animals, so every weekend he puts on his waders, goes out in the barn, and shovels the manure, and the dirty hay, and puts the new hay in, and feeds the horses, and cleans up their piss. It’s not a good job. It’s miserable, but someone has to shovel the shit so the family can enjoy what they have. That is how he framed it for me. ‘You shovel the shit so your family, so the United States, can have what we have and live the way we do.’ ”
“When you come to rely on the written word, it's time to light the fire with it.”
“We look at the world through our own eyes, naturally. But by looking from the inside out, we see an inside-out world.”
“The idea made her sick and scared, but so what? Why did it matter if something scared you, when it simply had to be done anyway?”
“The problem, as I see it, are the twin human creations of marriage and religion. It is marriage and religion that make copulation complex and hurtful. Marriage brings up notions of trust, cuckoldry and ownership, while religion makes certain kinds of intimacy sinful.”
“Whether you made your choices with your eyes open or closed, they’re made. It’s not time to regret them; it’s time to live with the consequences.”
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