War is society's dirty work, usually done by kids cleaning up failures perpetrated by adults.

Matterhorn is my metaphor of the Vietnam War - we built it, we abandoned it, we assaulted it, we lost, and then we abandoned it again.

I began writing 'Matterhorn' in 1975 and for more than 30 years I kept working on my novel in my spare time, unable to get an agent or publisher to even read the manuscript.

When the peace treaty is signed, the war isn't over for the veterans, or the family. It's just starting.

It was all absurd, without reason or meaning. People who didn't know each other were going to kill each other over a hill none of them cared about

It won't hurt you. It's just to kill plants. It's called Agent Orange...and it won't bother humans.

The Marine Corps taught me how to kill, but it didn't teach me how to deal with killing.

Everything is touched by the holy when it is in the presence of death.

Once we recognize our shadow's existence we must resist the enticing step of going with its flow.

Quitting is unthinkable and pain is just weakness leaving the body

How could you get mad at someone who neither needed to attack nor was at all worried about being able to defend? It was like getting mad at Switzerland.

Although there are several 'schools of thought' relating to why God allows mental, emotional, and physical afflictions, it essentially remains a mystery"~ R. Alan Woods [2012]

Once you start asking questions innocence is gone.

As long as there are readers to be delighted with calumny there will be found reviewers to calumniate.

I write and sing about whatever I am able to understand and feel.

You find out your mistakes from an audience that pays admission.

Be kind; you're only here for a while. No sense of superiority, just do things for others. It's really fun.

The masses have never thirsted after truth. Whoever can supply them with illusions is easily their master; whoever attempts to destroy their illusions is always their victim.

As warmth makes even glaciers trickle, and opens streams in the ribs of frozen mountains, so the heart knows the full flow and life of its grief only when it begins to melt and pass away.

A lot of people that are always trying to be funny and "on" and performing are just hiding. It's just a cover for what they really are and how they really feel.

I just want to try - on a daily basis keep trying - to make music that I really love.