When you live next to death ... you don't think about it anymore, you just try to encounter it as seldom as possible.

We didn’t believe in tomorrow. We we couldn’t forget what had happened yesterday.

By 1989, the total number of Vietnam veterans who had died in violent accidents or by suicide after the war exceeded the total number of American soldiers who died during the war.

Once, back home, I decided to count how many days out of my twenty months in Afghanistan I’d been on combat missions. 217 days. And I’m still paying the price for every one of those days.

There's nothing I can do to erase the shadow of misery and despair from the eyes looking back at me from the photos [that I took in Afghanistan].

[On one of his comrades depicted in the book:]"Sasha was my friend … Like me, he was 19. But he didn't come home. He was killed 12 hours after this photo was taken.

Someone once said that a minesweeper makes only two mistakes: the first is when he decides to be one. The second …

Witchcraft is fun. It offers us a chance to play, to act silly, to let the inner child come out. Out of foolishness and play, creativity is born.

When you look at the average American you realize there's nothing nature enjoys more than a good joke.

On daughter Apple's accent: She says Mummy instead of Mommy, I don't mind that. I will if she starts saying basil and pasta the English way, as that really drives me nuts.

Never educate a child to be a gentleman or lady alone, but to be a man, a woman.

I'm not a big weird eater-of-things. I mean honestly I would say like for me, like escargot or sweetbreads is the weirdest thing I've eaten. But I haven't eaten like bugs or... not that I know of.

For healthy adult people, the really big thing we can foresee are ways of intervening in the ageing process, either by slowing or reversing it.

All stories should have some honesty and truth in them, otherwise you're just playing about.

And now, Though haply mellow'd by correcting time, I thank thee, Heaven! that the bereaving world Hath not diminish'd the subliming hopes Of youth, in manhood's more imposing cares.

I think we have to think about strategies that will help kids who have disabilities.

When you give directives to a child, especially a teenager, you must consider the nature of your child.