Американський снайпер

Help people help themselves—that’s the way it should be.

When people ask me how the war changed me, I tell them that the biggest thing has to do with my perspective.

You know all the everyday things that stress you here?

I don’t give a shit about them. There are bigger and worse things that could happen than to have this tiny little problem wreck your life, or even your day. I’ve seen them.

More: I’ve lived them.

I’m proud of my service, but I sure as hell didn’t do it for any medal. They don’t make me any better or less than any other guy who served. Medals never tell the whole story.

She was always a good sport, always insisting that I didn’t have to hide things from her. She claimed her imagination was a lot worse than anything that really could happen to me.

I don’t know about that.

The sons of the election officials were a favorite target. The insurgents would use the families to put pressure on the officials to drop out. Or else they’d just kill the family members as a warning to others not to help the government hold the elections or even vote.

Every so often, there’s a sign of normal life before the war, something that has nothing to do with it: a kid’s toy, for example.

My attitude was: if my justification is I thought my target would do something bad, then I wasn’t justified. He had to be doing something bad.

I’ve already described what it felt like to take my first sniper shot; there may have been some hesitation in the back of my mind, an almost unconscious question: Can I kill this person?

Ninety percent of being cool is looking cool.