I don't come from a rich family - it's not like we lived in a cardboard box, but we didn't have a ton of money.

I remember the first time I put on the Army uniform. I just felt like a totally different person - I felt proud.

I could be, you know, the person that shows little kids that giving up isn't something that you should do.

The truth is always more heroic than the hype.

I try to dream about peaceful things, beaches, that is what I cannot understand. Why are they chasing me?

Honesty has always been very important to me.

I grew up in Palestine, West Virginia, which is mostly a farming community; there aren't a lot of jobs.

I'm not about to take credit for something I didn't do. I did not shoot - not a round, nothing. I went down praying to my knees - that's the last thing I remember.

Certain days I think definitely because we went in there and we got Saddam and that was our mission. On other days, we lost so many lives and so many brothers and sisters...on that aspect, no.

I have repeatedly said, when asked, that if the stories about me helped inspired our troops and rally a nation, then perhaps there was some good.

The whole idea that the rescue was staged or the soldiers were shooting blanks, that's just obvious stuff. Why would you do that in the middle of a war? It's just crazy.

Pay attention to the intricate patterns of your existence that you take for granted.

If heaven really exists: then heaven is the job, hell is unemployment, while life is merely an interview.

Her direct stare probed, as if the story of my life were written in my eyes in a few succinct lines that she could read.

No love is greater than that of a father for His son.

Listen, I am someone who had chosen to earn their daily bread killing other people. I'm inclined to give people a bit of leeway when it comes to their actions and decisions.

What we're really after is simply that people acquire a legal license for Windows for each computer they own before they move on to Linux or Sun Solaris or BSD or OS/2 or whatever.

I hope you didn't bring the Asian kid along thinking he's a computer genius. Because I'm not," Takumi said.

Of the many things we have done to democracy in the past, the worst has been the indignity of taking it for granted.

Which is now a more hopeful statement than Swift intended it to be.

So may he rest, his faults lie gently on him!