Mark Boal Quotes

My eyes are wide open... you serve in Iraq, your eyes are wide open.

Seen through the eyes of a U.S. soldier, Afghanistan is a scary place.

I think probably the scaredest I've ever been was in Somalia. I arrived there when the episode that became known as 'Black Hawk Down' was still taking place. The Americans were still pinned down under fire. And everybody else was basically going the other way, and I was the only one putting my hand up for a flight in.

I had no desire to go to Iraq. I never wanted to go to Mosul. I'm not a war correspondent. No part of me thrives on the adrenaline or anything like that.

I've been in Iraq, and it never occurred to me to go, 'Hey, this war is bogus,' to some guy who's 24 hours a day trying not to get shot at or blown up.

When I decided to stay in Iraq, I decided to take the fear out of my body and put it into a freezer.

Since cowardice must occur at a time and place where an enemy either has already appeared or may yet turn up, servicemen in peacetime - and ordinary civilians - can breathe a sigh of relief. If you are yellow-bellied back home, you're not technically a coward.

My experience on 'Jarhead' was life changing.

The true credit for our safety and security goes to our men and women who are serving in places like Iraq and Afghanistan in the global war on terrorism.

The anxiety of most parents in seeing their sons and daughters enlist does not lie only in the fear of the physical dangers they may encounter.

I don't know what effect these men will have upon the enemy, but, by God, they frighten me.

Doesn't it strike you as queer that I, who couldn't cut the head off a chicken, and who was sick at the sight of blood, should be cast into the middle of a great war, with blood flowing all about me.

Men go to war for fear, honor or interest.

I want to score but when you think of the soldiers in Iraq with bullets flying around their heads you realise a penalty isn't something to get too worried about.

In Afghanistan, getting shot at was a regular occurrence. I viewed survival as a numbers game. As point man, every time I entered a Taliban compound first, I played the odds in my head.

Being in the Marine Corps and doing the job I did, there is a lot of risk involved. It made me comfortable with risk.

When you're going off to Iraq, your horizons become more short term.

There are 160,000 of our men and women in Iraq that wonder whether there is going to be a hand grenade or a missile lobbed into where they are sleeping at night. Those are people who make a real sacrifice.

As an old soldier, I admit the cowardice: it's as universal as seasickness, and matters just as little.

Having been in the military myself, there is an awful moment when you're in this moment of conflict.

Danger is very real but fear is a choice.

Our nation was horrified, but it's not going to be terrorized.

His body rigid with terror as he waited for the savages to something horrible to him—bash his head with clubs, or stab him with spears, or… …or tap him on the shoulder.

Risk is not a dirty word.

Bravery is a mean state concerned with things that inspire confidence and with things fearful ... and leading us to choose danger and to face it, either because to do so is noble, or because not to do so is base. But to court death as an escape from poverty, or from love, or from some grievous pain, is no proof of bravery, but rather of cowardice.