Jake Gyllenhaal Quotes

What you experience in the army, aged 18 to 21, is what you take through all your life. You cross invisible lines: you shoot someone, get shot, break into people's houses. It's naive to think you won't carry anything into your life.

As a veteran, I know firsthand the satisfaction there is in defending the democracy you so strongly believe in, but I can also attest to the trauma encountered from combat on the battlefield.

As a combat veteran, I know the cost of war.

War was my university. Everything has proceeded from there.

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.

Nobody hates a war more than soldiers who have been through it.

You know, I had gone to war.

I was away from the front lines for a while this spring, living with other troops, and considerable fighting took place while I was gone. When I got ready to return to my old friends at the front I wondered if I would sense any change in them.

No one hates war like a soldier hates war.

For me, at least, Vietnam was partly love. With each step, each light-year of a second, a foot soldier is always almost dead, or so it feels, and in such circumstances, you can't help but love.

I served two tours in Iraq, in the Marine Corps.

In 1967, I signed up for the Army, where I earned an equivalency diploma, then went on to join the Special Forces. That was really was the turning point in my life. I became more disciplined and focused. I went overseas and was in combat, got wounded a couple of times, lost a lot of good friends but matured a great deal.

The Vietnam War totally turned my life around. Some people's lives were eliminated or destroyed by the experience. I was one of the fortunate few who came out better off.

I was in the Navy and saw, first-hand, the effects of front-line combat.

The notion that war forever separates veterans from the rest of mankind has been long embedded in our collective consciousness.

As one who participated in all the wars of the state of Israel, I saw the horror of wars. I saw the fear of wars. I saw my best friends being killed in battles. I was seriously injured twice.

The soldier, above all other people, prays for peace, for he must suffer and bear the deepest wounds and scars of war.

'The Wall' doesn't recount a specific soldier's experience in Iraq, but it captures the spirit of many experiences that were shared with me and with Aaron Taylor-Johnson and with John Cena.

I am not going to second-guess my old battlefield comrades from Iraq and Afghanistan; each has his own reason for what he has done.

There's nothing glorious about combat. I've been there and done that.

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 many wars already.

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.

You don't have to be in Nam to be in Nam.

Pearl Harbor was the defining event in my life. It shaped who I am, and all of my hang-ups and my drives, I think, stem from that.