“ The only thing that makes battle psychologically tolerable is the brotherhood among soldiers. You need each other to get by. Sebastian Junger
“ I decided to start a medical training program for freelancers, only freelancers. They're the ones who are doing most of the combat reporting. They're taking most of the risks. They're absorbing most o… Sebastian Junger
“ 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… Sebastian Junger
“ It's fun to have money, but the more money I get, the less interesting it becomes. If you don't have very much, you have to think about it. If you are starving, you become interested in food. If you a… Sebastian Junger
“ I don't think people would climb mountains or jump off bridges with parachutes or kayak Class V rapids if those things didn't offer the brief and horrible illusion of imminent death. They would just b… Sebastian Junger
“ If you shell a military base and happen to kill civilians, you have not committed a war crime; if you deliberately target cities and towns, you have. Sebastian Junger
“ Of the primary emotions, fear is the one that bears most directly on survival. Children show fear. Adults try not to, maybe because it's shameful, or, in some circumstances, dangerous. The fear respon… Sebastian Junger
“ Well, you got to remember, bin Laden killed 3,000 Americans and, in some ways, he and his ideology killed tens of thousands of his fellow Muslims, including Pakistanis. I understand that that was prov… Sebastian Junger
“ Traditional Albanian society was based on a clan system and was further divided into brotherhoods and bajraks. The bajrak system identified a local leader, called a bajrakar, who could be counted on t… Sebastian Junger
“ I think human society for tens of thousands of years has sent young men out in small groups to do things that are necessary but very dangerous. And they've always gotten killed doing it. And they've a… Sebastian Junger
“ How do men act on a sinking ship? Do they hold each other? Do they pass around the whisky? Do they cry? Sebastian Junger
“ The coward’s fear of death stems in large part from his incapacity to love anything but his own body. The inability to participate in others’ lives stands in the way of his developing any inner resour… Sebastian Junger
“ An earthquake achieves what the law promises but does not in practice maintain," one of the survivors wrote. "The equality of all men". Sebastian Junger
“ Today's veterans often come home to find that, although they're willing to die for their country, they're not sure how to live for it. Sebastian Junger
“ They had not yet started out across a continent of grief that a lifetime of walking could not cover. Sebastian Junger
“ Women tend to act heroically within their own moral universe, regardless of whether anyone else knows about it - donating more kidneys to nonrelatives than men do, for example. Men, on the other hand,… Sebastian Junger
“ I know what coming back to America from a war zone is like because I’ve done it so many times. First, there’s a kind of shock at the comfort and affluence that we enjoy, but that is followed by the di… Sebastian Junger
“ The problem is that it's hard to aim a rifle when your heart is pounding, which points to an irony of modern combat: it does extraordinarily violent things to the human body but requires almost dead c… Sebastian Junger
