Lee Child Quotes

After I was discharged from the military, it was difficult trying to become a civilian.

What happens for a lot of veterans when they come home, especially when they get back to their community is that they can go to a very tough and hard place and they start to wonder, 'What's next for me?' and they ask themselves, 'Why did this happen to me?'

I grew up in a military family. I was moved around from school to school, so people aren't always the most welcoming to new girls in school.

I never really had any close friends in India, and I felt a terrible loneliness and isolation for many years. Westernized Indians don't like my books and I tend not to like westernized Indians - so we're quits.

I lived in a state of rage from 12 to 20. Until college, I was beyond an outsider. I was a voyeur of life.

Much as soldiers come back, they've been in combat or the edge of it and suddenly that adjustment back to civilian life is a real challenge.

The military is a discrete entity. Then they come back, and they're such a small percentage of the population, and they can't really - it's hard for them to talk to civilians.

Othello is someone who's just had a victory, and it's the aftermath of coming back and attempting to live comfortably as a civilian.

Veteran causes are an extremely important issue, especially the transition from military to civilian life.

Transitioning out of the military after a decade or more of service can be exciting and scary. Even more so when you have a family to support and are not experienced with the challenges of transitioning from active duty to civilian life.

When I got out of the Marine Corps, I didn't have much guidance.

If I felt like a fish out of water in my family, I felt like a fish on Mars in Adam’s circle.

I remember crying all the time. My major thing growing up was I couldn't fit in. Because I was from everywhere, I didn't have no buddies that I grew up with...Every time I had to go to a new apartment, I had to reinvent myself, myself. People think just because you born in the ghetto you gonna fit in. A little twist in your life and you don't fit in no matter what. If they push you out of the hood and the White people's world, that's criminal...Hell, I felt like my could be destroyed at any moment.

If decade after decade the truth cannot be told, each person's mind begins to roam irretrievably. One's fellow countrymen become harder to understand than Martians.

Being in a first-world country, it's like we have a first-row seat to witnessing humanity, but we're not really witnessing anything. Despite all the new technological tools we've been given, we're still powerless, watching everything happen like it's a theatrical performance.

I'm happy that the sacrificing, the hard training, the travel, the time being away from the family, is going to stop. So I'm happy; I'm glad about that. But I'm also terrified. Frightened. Because, I mean, in my whole adult life, cycling was the most consistent thing I ever did.

I was sometimes a bit lonely as a teenager. There was a cultural disconnect.

When vets come home from war they are going through a tremendous change in identity. Then the VA, and others, encourage them to view themselves as disabled.

We have a responsibility as ex-soldiers to realise we're no longer in the military. All this 'once a soldier, always a soldier', that's all well and good, but that attitude doesn't work in society.

Everybody feels like an outsider at some point in their lives.

Writing in English made me become a foreigner in my own country. It helped me create the necessary distance to my homeland.

The black geeks of the world, we feel like we don't have a home.

I've felt like an outcast most of my life, being in multiple high schools and being a military child.

I walked around the block twice, passed 200 people and failed to see a human being.

there were times when I was more at home in front of millions of people than I was at home.