Quotes from Doug Stanton

Each summer, as Lake Michigan finally begins to warm, I think of the men of the World War II cruiser Indianapolis and the worst disaster at sea in United States naval history. I go down to the lake, and I wonder: How would I have survived what they experienced?

Simple words of encouragement subsequently saved many of the Indianapolis' sailors during their ordeal in the summer of 1945, and those men took the lesson to heart.

When I was writing my first book, 'In Harm's Way,' I witnessed the sense of sacrifice that those WWII veterans possessed. I was surprised that sometimes their grandchildren hadn't talked to them about the historic events of that night in July 1945, when the USS Indianapolis went down.

When I look at Lake Michigan each July, I imagine the men of the Indianapolis visible on the horizon; dark heads, struggling arms, a cry and whirl of a world being remade. I feel an overwhelming sense of sadness, accompanied by a desire to yell out that they will be rescued.

I don't think it's healthy to have 68-year-old men, 70-year-old men thinking regularly about a traumatic experience that happened to them and thinking that they cannot talk about it with anybody, and no one wants to listen.

During the writing of all of my books, I've learned that, most of all, people want to know that someone is listening and - this is the tricky part - remembering.

One of the reasons I wrote 'Horse Soldiers' was to understand the world my children would inherit after the events of 2001.

Of all the places I've been while talking to audiences about the U.S. Army's 5th Special Forces Group and their story in Afghanistan, one of the most rewarding was an appearance before the 5th Group soldiers themselves at Ft. Campbell, their home, and the place from which they had launched their historic mission in Afghanistan in 2001.

That's the potential power of a single voice - a neighbor's, a teacher's, a parent's, a friend's. It can change you, make you feel as if you have a place in the world.

Instead of large-scale occupations, we should rely on small units of Special Forces who have proved it's infinitely more effective to work with a country's soldiers and citizens at eye level.

The action of 'Horse Soldiers' is back-dropped by the story of how America went to war with little time to prepare - but with a lot of moxie.

Most audiences are being attracted to '12 Strong' because of what they might expect to see from a movie like this, which is that the Americans arrive, they march into the camp, they take it over, and take charge. It's like, 'Everything's going to be fine now. We're here.' That's not how these guys operate. They're very different.

Traverse City sits halfway between the North Pole and the Equator, and our summer days are long. The light seems to take forever to vanish from the sky, and when it does, it goes out like someone folding a white sheet in the dark. A flare on the horizon. Then a rustle: Goodnight.

Robert Frost had a house in Bennington, Vermont, and I had a friend, the poet Mary Ruefle, who was the caretaker of it when it was owned by Norman Lear, the TV producer. She got a grant to go to Scotland, and she had to be gone six or nine months, so I moved in, and my job was just to make sure the ravage didn't overtake the place.

I wanted to write 'In Harm's Way' from the young men's point of view of being in a raft, or hanging in a life vest with just their nose poking above the water.