In rooting around for something to grab onto, I latched onto the past and people in the past who I felt were strong, actively ethical characters.

Gideon is unaware of it; he's grown up in it, and accepts the shortcomings until -- it's sort of a typical Everyman situation -- you accept the shortcomings until you get shoved up against an uncomfortable wall by them and have to look at them. And that's what happens to him. It's not a voluntary process.

I'm still a firm believer that we were definitely put here to use our minds, and that is what makes us different. And that that's the key. If there is anything that is going to stop mankind from being such a beastly, destructive creature, it is reason.

I feel horribly vindicated. Three thousand people died who didn't have to die.

[Some question the value of accounts that have been quickly turned around.] Memoirs in general aren't of any quality or use until enough time has passed that somebody can put some perspective on what they went through, ... There's no way to give this war a chance to mean anything because we're judging it so quickly.

I was a pretty angry kid, and I got into military history largely as a way to vent my own anger. As I got older it narrowed down to a more specific focus on individual violence. I'm just trying to understand where it came from.