I don't believe Iran is a suicide state.

You know as well as I do that counterinsurgency is a very nuanced type of military operation.

But the key shift in focus will be from counter-insurgency operations to more and more cooperation with Iraqi security forces and to building Iraqi security capacity.

We'll try to include Iraqi officers in our staffs. We will do everything we can to empower Iraqi security forces to stand up on their own and operate where they can alone.

So, these political activities will create friction in and of themselves, and in this environment of friction there'll be additional violence.

But clearly the fact that we've gone from zero Iraqi security forces on duty in May to up to 200,000 today is an enormous accomplishment, but it's not enough.

Morale is good; troops are confident; leaders are capable.

And so I think that if the person has the funds, the network, and the equipment to do this, and also the experience, which is the key factor, then they can be quite deadly.

You don't build a new power plant in the United States overnight. It takes years to build.

Everybody needs to understand that I learned Arabic from the United States Army as a second language. I never spoke it at home.

Undoubtedly, there are members of the former regime that are cooperating in some fashion and then there are extremists that are within Iraq that are cooperating with them.

The most critical time in any battle is not when I’m fatigued, it’s when I no longer care.

...filled her memory bank with shiny coins.

Going shopping with your husband is like his going fishing with the game warden.

I don't like to practice; I like spontaneity. When I don't play guitar for a week and I pick it up again, I play better.

I've always been able to recount things and I have a really good memory about dialog and what people have said before and this and that.

Idleness is the parent of psychology.

Ye come and go incessant; we remain Safe in the hallowed quiets of the past; Be reverent, ye who flit and are forgot, Of faith so nobly realized as this.

The tricky or boastful gods of ancient myths and primitive folk tales are characters of the same kind that turn up in Faulkner or Tennessee Williams.

The choices we make when we're broken are sometimes the most awful of all our choices.

Dazed, Nick nodded, then looked to Caleb. “I’m such an effing idiot.” “We knew that,” he said drily. “We definitely didn’t have to throw you into a coma for that little-known nugget.