Adversity has the remarkable ability of introducing the real you to yourself.

— M.B. Dallocchio

A moving target is harder to kill, and I didn't stop running, maneuvering, until I reached home base, where I could breathe between death-defying sprints. I just need to make it home alive, and this will all be over, I told myself. Home.

— M.B. Dallocchio

Aside from clinically-diagnosed psychopaths, I have not met one person in war who thoroughly enjoyed killing. If someone ended up bragging over a kill, it was safe to assume that their story was mere fabrication or that they were one bad day away from an inpatient psychiatric ward. No matter how much someone may appear to deserve to be killed, something dies within us when we kill. It's contradictory, the antithesis of our species survival instinct.

— M.B. Dallocchio

A wave of sausage swept over me as I realized home never existed at all. The concept of home felt far from my reach, and I felt sick with longing.

— M.B. Dallocchio

A woman in combat? Yes. Since when? Since Native American warrior Buffalo Calf Road Woman knocked that prick General George Custer off of his horse. Since Panted Arteshbod propelled herself to become one of the greatest Persian commanders during the reign of Cyrus the Great. Since Huey Mulan disguised herself as a male to engage in combat and became one of China’s most respected heroines.

— M.B. Dallocchio

Czechs simply don’t say they’re going camping or spending time outdoors. They say, in Czech, that they are going “into the nature” as though nature, period, is beyond a place in the woods or other forms of terrain, that nature was a state of mind and had the ability to reverse the crippling, chaotic aspects of life.

— M.B. Dallocchio

Everyone around me was allowed, permitted to fall apart; yet I had to think twice. I couldn't bear to take another dip into an ocean of solitude for another taste of ostracization. I felt I would die.

— M.B. Dallocchio

Fine art is the discipline of breaking rules.

— M.B. Dallocchio

Get acquainted with your shadow, or find yourself surprised when a crisis emerges.

— M.B. Dallocchio

Home.” This was my mantra, my four-letter savior.

— M.B. Dallocchio