asked for you   (quote)

"One of the things I found out [in the Gulf War], which is quite interesting personally is that people, at least men—I don't know about women—... go to great lengths in life to not find out the answer to the question, How brave am I? War presents you with specific opportunities to find out the answer to that question... The question is asked for you and answered for you, in front of you and in front of other people. It's interesting because you see it in all the people around you and you see it in yourself. And that's knowledge you have for the rest of your life."
...
"Accepting death [is] indispensable to defeating death," he wrote. "We [Americans] are a nation in which there are fewer and fewer people ... who accept what every twelve-year-old [in Bosnia] knows: That there are things worth dying for."

 -Mike Kelly, quoted in True to his Words