“I figure when my husband comes home from work, if the kids are still alive, then I've done my job.”

“As a housewife, I feel that if the kids are alive when my husband gets home from work, then hey, I've done my job”

“All the sins I've committed, I've done them with one objective: to keep my men alive. Those kids in my squad, those kids of mine, they are everything. My wife doesn't understand this job or why I do it. My son is too young. My dad wouldn't get it if I tried to explain. My mom would have a heart attack. The need to keep my men alive makes everything else negotiable, and everyone and everything a potential threat.”

“I know that I've been given more than beyond measure. I come alive when I see beyond my fears. I know that I've been given more than earthly treasure. I come alive when I've broken down and given you control.”

“What would I like to get away from? Complexity. Anxiety. A feeling I've had my whole life that at any given time there's something I'm forgetting, some detail or chore, something that I'm supposed to be doing or should have already done. That nagging sensation - I get up with it, I go through the day with it, I go to sleep with it. When I was a kid, I had a habit of coming home from school on Friday afternoons and immediately doing my homework. So I'd wake up on Saturday morning with this wonderful sensation, a clean, open feeling of relief and possibility and calm. There'd be nothing I had to do. Those Saturday mornings, they were a taste of real freedom that I've hardly ever experienced as an adult. I never wake up in Elmsford with the feeling that I've done my homework.”

“You still haven't said where you come from. Where is your home?"I said, "I am a sheath, so home is wherenever my shade, my blade is.”