Mark Helprin Quotes

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.

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.

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

'Shortly Thereafter' chronicles all the aspects of an Afghanistan deployment, from the terrors of the unknown that await before leaving, to the perverse thrills and adrenaline rushes found in combat, to the return home to a land and a people now more foreign than the war itself was.

My younger brother is a decorated combat veteran and was a platoon leader in Iraq.

In the Marine Corps, you meet this really broad segment of the country; you're working with people from all kinds of backgrounds. And it exposes you to the American military, particularly the American military at war.

For all its ubiquity and its universality, war offers the attraction of the extraordinary - the escape from the gray everyday, from the humdrum into higher things.

War was my university. Everything has proceeded from there.

My experience on 'Jarhead' was life changing.

I followed the war wherever I could reach it.

It sounds strange to say it, but you can be in a war zone and have a lot of fun. Even though war is essentially pain on all sides, human beings have the capacity to enjoy themselves. The soldiers are mostly young people, full of enthusiasm and energy, and that's an exciting thing for an old guy like me.

Vietnam was my nightmare for a good ten years.

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

I suddenly remember something I've been told about fear. That amid a hail of machine gun fire you notice the existence of your skin.

La guerre, la guerre, everything la guerre. That's how I grew up. So for me, it's real. It's not something in the past.

I always like it at a war. There is always the chance that you will get up the next morning and be killed and not have to write.

I've gone to war zones before and never got shot.

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.

I was drafted when I was 17, and I spent two years, and I lost a friend in war.

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.

My mother tried really hard to protect us, but occasionally, after afternoon cartoons of whatever was on... the nightly news would come on, and I'd see footage from the war zone, and I would hear the word 'Vietnam,' and I would know my dad was over there, and it was a very frightening experience for me.

The Long and the Short and the Tall made a great impression on me because it was a very ugly tale about the reality of soldiering at a time when we were being gung-ho about the whole thing of war.

War is fear cloaked in courage.

I hate war as only a soldier who has lived it can.