“This is my fifth time in prison. Every crime I’ve committed has come from my addiction.”

“I was studying landscape architecture at Penn State and dealing drugs on the side.”

“I understand that it’s not sexy to talk about treatment. But the maddening thing about PTSD is that it’s completely fucking fixable.”

“The military is mostly filled with people who genuinely desire to do the right thing.”

“We met in college. Mark had long hair and a beard. He was class president so there were posters of him hanging up around campus.”

“I don’t feel good about it. It will bother me for the rest of my life and honestly I’m happy about that.”

“I have professors at Columbia who view me as a terrorist for fighting in Iraq.”

“I don’t think it’s possible to be a medic in a conflict zone and not have something stay with you.”

“I was inside an armored carrier with my platoon commander. He tried to open a pressurized fuel container and it sprayed across the vehicle and hit a camping stove that he was using to make hot chocolate.”

“Everyone who comes back from deployment fills out a form. It’s a standard psychological evaluation.”

“I was in charge of 250 Marines during my second deployment. We were assigned to a district called Sangin.”

“We got called out one day to assist a fuel convoy that was being pinned down by gunfire.”

“My brother went to Harvard. He’s ‘Good Will Hunting’ smart.”

“I didn’t fit in too well in training. I came back from drinking one night and I was three minutes after curfew.”

“My father was a platoon sergeant in the Pennsylvania National Guard. But nobody ever thought I’d join the military.”

“My father loved children. But I was his favorite because I was the small one.”

“The army searched our house six times. The first two times they knocked on the door.”

“I’m sixty-two years old. I was a government clerk in Baghdad.”

“I lived in Mosul for five months under ISIS. I tried to avoid trouble but one of my neighbors reported me for shaving my beard”

“I studied to be a teacher, but I’m young, so I knew I’d be forced to fight.”