Doug Liman Quotes

That's driven by any number of factors, the most prominent of which have been the combat experience of two major campaigns - one in Afghanistan and the other in Iraq - and the ongoing demands of the global war on terrorism.

When I first came back from Iraq, I of course found myself thinking a lot about it. Not just my experiences, but those of people I talked to, friends, and colleagues.

I understood that 'The Yellow Birds' would be a peculiar representation of the experience of being at war. I intended it to be so.

If you are a real soldier, you never get over the war.

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

As we began to read more and more journals of men who had been in the Civil War and then been in the Indian Wars, we realized there was a whole universe of men whose souls had been shattered, whose lives had been utterly destroyed by what they had to do.

I learned a lot from Vietnam veterans, especially as some of them turned against their own war.

When I was in the war, I was lucky that I was in a plane and never saw the carnage close-up.

You come back from war, and you have a certain authority to talk about war.

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.

Vietnam was my nightmare for a good ten years.

My dad was in the Second World War with General Patton. He won medals for bravery, but he came home quite damaged, so he was a handful. He told us some terrible stories, and I guess you'd say he suffered from post-traumatic stress disorder.

My parents are both war veterans; they met in Vietnam. They were involved in a war that they absolutely disagreed with.

I know that nobody who hasn't been in battle or under attack can know what war is. But even in terms of being safe at home, it's also true that many Americans who think they know what being at war is, don't. Including, of course, George W. Bush and his people. They don't have a clue.

If you write a novel where war is nothing but hell and no one experiences excitement or cracks a dark joke, then you're not actually admitting the full experience.

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.

Trauma is not the sole province of victims. If that were true, soldiers returning from Afghanistan wouldn't suffer from PTSD.

I think there's a tremendous split between people who've been through a war and people who haven't.

It's very strange getting out of the military, when you've lived in Iraq, and people you know are going overseas again and again. Some of them are getting injured.

It was my duty to shoot the enemy, and I don't regret it. My regrets are for the people I couldn't save: Marines, soldiers, buddies. I'm not naive, and I don't romanticize war. The worst moments of my life have come as a SEAL. But I can stand before God with a clear conscience about doing my job.

The negative effects of combat were nightmares, and I'd get jumpy around certain noises and stuff, but you'd have that after a car accident or a bad divorce. Life's filled with trauma. You don't need to go to war to find it; it's going to find you. We all deal with it, and the effects go away after awhile. At least they did for me.

World War II affected the male population in a very detrimental way. They were happy to be home, happy to be alive, happy they won, but they could not express to anybody the horror they had been through.

No person can escape Einsteinian relativity, and no soldier or veteran can escape the trauma of war's dislocation.

The Marine Corps taught me how to kill, but it didn't teach me how to deal with killing.

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.