174 Quotes by Sebastian Junger

I was surprised how open and unguarded the military was. I expected more scrutiny, more supervision from command.

All journalists hope that their work will inspire a broader conversation. I think that's just what journalism is.

Bad news is dramatic. It makes good TV. If there's a firefight on the same day that a school opens up, the media will show the firefight even though the school is way more important and will affect the community for much longer.

In some ways, risk-taking is the ultimate act of self-indulgence , an obscene insult to the preciousness of life. And yet, how can one dismiss something that persists despite every reasonable theory that it shouldn't?

An adventure is a situation where the outcome is not entirely within your control. It is up to fate, in other words

At 19, your brain hasn't finished wiring itself. So the first time you have a good friend die, most people don't go through that at 19. Soldiers do. They're facing life in this accelerated, compressed form, and a lot of times, they're not ready for it.

In my eyes Marlantes has become the pre-eminent literary voice on war of our generation. He is a natural storyteller and a deeply profound thinker who not only illuminates war for civilians, but also offers a kind of spiritual guidance to vets themselves. As this generation of warriors comes home, they will be enormously helped by what Marlantes has written. I’m sure he will literally save lives.

The one thing that might be said for societal collapse is that – for a while at least – everyone is equal.

As the helicopter fell, its dead rotors started to spin, and Ruvola used that energy to slow the aircraft down. Like downshifting a car on a hill, a hovering auto-rotation is a way of dissipating the force of gravity by feeding it back through the engine. By the time the helicopter hit the water it had slowed to a manageable speed, and all the torque had been bled out of the rotors;.