Michael Jackson Quotes

Supposedly, going to war initiates you into this gnostic priesthood of people who've had a liminal experience forever separating them from civilians. Except... you go there, and it is what it is. A form of human activity as varied as any other.

I went through some real challenges growing up. I joined the Army two weeks out of high school when I was 17, and never looked back.

I feel that I am nine years old, seven and a half years in the Afghan Jihad, one and a half years in Jihad in Palestine and the rest of the years have no value.

I was told as a teenager that I would never walk again.

War was my university. Everything has proceeded from there.

From the time I was very young, I was a professional, making money and assuming responsibilities. I didn't live the life of a child. I was living the life of a 30-year-old.

I have been wounded altogether twenty times; eleven of these wounds were received at Northfield.

I catch myself judging myself as that 13-year-old boy, who, of course, rightfully points out that he is only a child. And my membership - well, I was drafted into the Waffen-SS and didn't exactly volunteer, which was just as idiotic. I wanted to be on the submarines and then ended up with the Waffen-SS.

I am a child but I have to think and act like a woman, this business forces you to.

You have to remember I've been working with adults since I was 12 - they were my peers, and it has an effect, for sure.

In February 1969, 25 years ago, I arrived as a young, terrified PFC on this lonely little hill in Quang Ngai Province. Back then, the place seemed huge and imposing and permanent.

Obviously all of us have thought about Vietnam, particularly in my generation in Australia that were part of conscription and fought there. Our friends came back, forever changed. So there were a lot of questions.

I never got a chance to be a teenager.

I was interested in the war part of 'Star Wars,' so I started reading about what it's like to go to war, what that does to you psychically, about the adrenaline and the rush.

Soldiers know what war is like. That's why so many of them turn out to be peacemakers.

I’m no hero. Hero’s don’t return from war. Survivors do.

Vietnam was my nightmare for a good ten years.

When I came back from Vietnam in 1965, I just had the greatest brainwashing anybody could get…

I was very down as a teenager, very upset because I had gotten hurt in a car accident. But my dad was a source of strength. He used to say, 'It's the character with strength that God gives the most challenges to.' I've thought about that so many times in my life when things didn't go right.

When you lose a parent at ten years old, the world seems like a much scarier place. It makes complete sense to me that I took survival courses when I was a teenager and started going to war zones as a reporter. I didn't ever want to be taken advantage of, and I wanted to be able to take care of those around me.

I've lived so much life as a young man. New Orleans, we got terms, and one's like, 'He jumped off the porch early.' That's kind of what happened to me. I had to grow up really quick.

Living through war has helped make me pretty strong.

I've been fighting since I was 15. I know what war is.

Long before I achieved financial success and became the subject of a Hollywood film, I was a veteran, a single father, and a working person who was homeless.

The war made me stronger; it was a very hard time for me and my family. I don't want to drag that with me forever, but I don't want to forget about it, either.