Being stubborn won’t make you fluent. Practicing will! The more mistakes you make, the more you’ll learn not to.

In World War One, they called it shell shock. Second time around, they called it battle fatigue. After ‘Nam, it was post-traumatic stress disorder.

An equation: 40,000 dead young men = 3,000 tons of bone and flesh, 124,000 pounds of brain matter, 50,000 gallons of blood, 1,840,000 years of life that will never be lived, 100,000 children that will...

It’s not that I had more important things to do or that I didn’t want to help with whatever problems were interfering with her students being successful—rather, it’s this horrible truth that life has taught...

The chanting went on, the musicians giving in to the rhythm of their own being, finding healing in touching that rhythm, and healing in chanting about death, the only real god they knew.

They stared at each other. Every ocean, every river, every minute they had walked together was in their gaze. He said nothing and she said nothing. She kneeled by him, her hands on him, on...

If wars create vast sums of money for the global elite, is it possible the Soviets, the Viet Cong and Muslim extremists were, or are, also fabricated enemies of the West along with North Korea?...

Truth has a resonance to it that fills the cracks where falsehoods lie.

Why should they ask me to put on a uniform and go 10,000 miles from home and drop bombs and bullets on Brown people in Vietnam while so-called Negro people in Louisville are treated like...

I’ve seen a lot of stuff… maybe I’ve seen too much. I see most humans in a bad light because I’ve seen what they can do, how evil they can be… I’ve seen the Holocaust...

The items we collected at the Roswell crash site need to be broken down and analyzed for future military use. Given what we’ve already learned, we have the potential to create soldiers who will perform...

Vietnam was a country where America was trying to make people stop being communists by dropping things on them from airplanes.

I left Hairball to his manic mantric singing. I walked toward the house and stopped to rub some white pine needles on my fingers. The evergreen smelled fresh and alive. The needles were long and...

No one has proved to me that my husband isn’t still alive somewhere in Southeast Asia. So, as far as I’m concerned, if even one man is alive, we own him more than this –...

Each day of war takes us farther from all we could hope to be or do. We gain nothing but heartbreak, and lose everything we cherish. Our lives erode and diminish, our children see no...

This is how I see humanity. When enemies come to your country, destroy the countryside and your village, kill your countrymen, your comrades and the defenseless wounded, you have to kill them and defend your...

We live in the post-trash, man. It’ll be a real short eon. Down in the ectoplasmic circuitry where humanity’s leaders are all linked up unconsciously with each other and with the masses, man, there’s been...

And in this moment, I realize one reason it’s so great to have a best friend is sometimes, like right now, Cal and I are thinking the very same thing.

The Americans won’t win. They’re not fighting for their homeland. They just want to be good. In order to be good, they just have to fight awhile and then leave.

It seems like our town has closed down these days leading up to the funeral. Old people still sit on their porches and talk, but their conversations aren’t sprinkled with laughter anymore. Since the new,...

Too young for Korea, too old for Vietnam.

The Mozart sonata Dad picked out begins to play. When we hear the first note, we open the sacks and the ladybugs escape through the opening, taking flight. It’s as if someone has dumped rubies...

A president who is burdened with a failed and unpopular war, and who has lost the trust of the country, simply can no longer govern. He is destined to become as much a failure as...

Know what an optimist is, Major? A pessimist without much experience.