Eric Garcia

"When Melinda filed for divorce, she wrote down only two words as her reason for seeking a dissolution of our two-year marriage: Incontrovertibly self-absorbed. Or is that three words? No matter. The question I have is: Did she mean me or her?"

"I signed up for the sake of a uniform. I was not the first, and I will not be the last."

"Like me, he would turn to the one thing that had always sustained him through difficult times, the one piece of hide-saving equipment with which the military way of life had vested us: We could kill people and not care all that much."

"Due to the nature of my profession, I’ve been around death quite a lot, and while I’m not exactly on a first-name basis with the Reaper, we’ve exchanged business cards enough times to give each other a friendly nod when we pass by on the job."

"True loneliness, I learned that day, isn’t the lack of others. It’s the lack of others quickly."

"“We had a good day,” Tig said, slapping me on the back. “Got a whole mess of ’em, didn’t we? Two fifty-eight confirmed.” “Forget the numbers. You woke up this morning, and you’re going to sleep tonight. In my book, that’s a good day.” In recent months, I have adopted Tig’s philosophy."

"I like to think that she was right. And I would have responded, but soon our talk show came on, and we stopped worrying about ourselves and each other and started worrying about celebrities."

"I recognize that the career draws applicants from a certain psychological pool. Garrett came from somewhere near the shallow end."

"I tell the truth, but I don’t need to divulge everything."

"“Son,” he said, “you’re going to work in this life, and you’re going to play. And when the last days come, you’ll look back and find that that’s all there was, and endless stream of days going back to today. But if you can find the thing you should be doing, the thing that makes you you, and if you can make that thing yours, then you’ve beaten the game. I haven’t. Most men don’t. You probably won’t, either, but the point is to try, and to never give up, even when you think it’s over.”"