“And if you don’t accept my challenge,” shouted the Iron Man, “then you’re a miserable cowardly reptile, not fit to bother with.”

“A fool shouts charge when he should retreat, A coward shouts retreat when he should charge and a wise man knows the difference. I charge.”

“You’re living in the past…in memories that are in but a single moment. You’re walking backwards in shoes that don’t fit.”

“…It’s not that you don’t have the capacity to accept the truth. You don’t want to accept it, and you hide behind your own logic and intelligence while the truth marches by. Step out and join it, for goodness’’ sake! Shout it out in full step! I believe!”

“I’m afraid you’re going to break me, Quinn.” “Don’t let me.” The challenge in his eyes intensified, heating up and pouring strength into me. “Don’t you let me fucking do that, Emilie. Don’t let anyone break you. You’re stronger than that.”

“... what he could or couldn’t say to them. Everything he had to say: I love you, it’s hell, I walk on corpses and breathe death, it’s only a matter of time before I prove a coward, and I don’t want to be a coward, but I don’t understand, either I kill people, or I’m a coward, that’s the choice, someone somewhere set it up and I get no vote, I can’t say, ‘I don’t accept that’ – and I have accepted it, for a year I’ve accepted it, this is the situation but I don’t understand how I got here, how it is just going on and on, and nobody mentions it, and if you don’t like it they think you’re mad, and you get shot, for cowardice, desertion . . . and your own men, your companions, your brothers, have to shoot you . . . and I’m so fucking scared out there every day, every night— and now they’ve made me a fucking officer — What the fuck could he say to any of them? Well, there’ll be none of that swearing for a start.”