Scientists say that when we recall something from our past, it isn’t as simple as taking out a photograph from an album. Because it isn’t the original memory we pull up. Rather, it’s a slightly different version of that memory – a memory of a memory. With each retrieval, the memory is altered.

One man’s sin is – by quirk of fate or need or desperation – another man’s necessity. – Sydney.

Don’t think of me as a role model. Think of me as someone who’s made mistakes so you don’t have to.

Every person’s life is a struggle against a world filled with resistance. That resistance may defeat us or warp us or crush us. But sometimes, we find a strength we didn’t know we had. And with that newly recognized strength, we move past the hard times. And we become a little stronger for the next round.

We are defined by family before we are defined by anything else; they are our first and primal debt.

Do not call us heroes. Not if you are calling us that in order to absolve yourself of guilt over sending us off to an unwinnable war. Some of us are heroes. But some of us never had the chance. And some of us got slammed face-first into the fact that when we looked inside, we found nothing heroic at all. – Corporal.

War is a drug; it’ll call you back until it kills you. – Corporal.

We’ve all been at least a little broken by the world. But the world only notices when we try to hurt it back.

Nina Simone wafted into the room. Cohen had queued up what I thought of as his deep-thinking playlist and piped it through the built-in sound system. I loved the great women of jazz. Simone, Holiday, Vaughan.

And I ran hard into a truth I’d known since Iraq. You could throw everything you had at a problem – firepower, manpower, logistical support. You could get a lot of really smart people working on it. You could even get a lot of people to sacrifice their lives for it. And, in the end, might be all you’ve got is the same problem and a higher body count. Forget saving the world. Sometimes you can’t even save one small child.