Farnaz Fassihi Quotes

My eyes are wide open... you serve in Iraq, your eyes are wide open.

My father made many narrow escapes during his time in Vietnam.

And I could have died right then. And considering how things went, I really should have.

I have been in danger of being drowned twice.

After Hurricane Katrina, over New Orleans, my helicopter crashed and the pilot and I were only saved because we fell on the roof of a flooded house that absorbed the shock. When the helicopter was spiraling downward out of control, I didn't expect to survive at all.

I suddenly remember something I've been told about fear. That amid a hail of machine gun fire you notice the existence of your skin.

She explained that the bullet had entered through the side of my left eye where there was a scar, traveled eighteen inches down to my left shoulder and stopped there. It could have taken out my eye or gone into my brain. It was a miracle I was alive.

I've been in Iraq, and it never occurred to me to go, 'Hey, this war is bogus,' to some guy who's 24 hours a day trying not to get shot at or blown up.

I think I'm a survivor. I could have suffered at least 100 professional deaths. I could come up with a list of the 100 times I've come closest to death, from having pneumonia as a child to car crashes.

You don't have to be in Nam to be in Nam.

I have spent the past ten years in just about every war zone there was.

My younger brother is a decorated combat veteran and was a platoon leader in Iraq.

The thing that strikes you most about being a soldier in a war zone and in action to the small extent that I was, when actually people start shooting, which happened to me a couple of times, everything goes on automatic and there's a feeling of tremendous elevation and even elation.

By any accepted standard, I have had more than nine lives. I counted them up once, and there were 13 times I almost and maybe should have died.

We don't mind that we still have troops in Germany, or that we still have troops in Japan or Korea. But they are not in danger, and we know that they are in danger in Iraq.

I didn't know a time when there wasn't a war because I spent all my time from the age of two or three to eight in a coal cellar really.

You've got all these people making action movies, and they've never been in a life-or-death situation.

I think I may try and write something about my pretty extraordinary experience with the 101st in Iraq.

In February 1969, 25 years ago, I arrived as a young, terrified PFC on this lonely little hill in Quang Ngai Province. Back then, the place seemed huge and imposing and permanent.

I followed the war wherever I could reach it.

They told me I'd never probably see the front-line area.

I taught high school for one year in Deerfield Beach, Fla., and in the end, it was such an enjoyable experience breaking up fights daily, that I decided to return to the combat zone of Afghanistan.

I came face to face with death at thirteen years old.

I've seen my fair share of drama over the years of Children In Need. I had a close brush with mortality in 2009 when a chain collapsed from the studio rigging. I was in mid-spout to camera when I heard an enormous crash behind me - a ton of steel had come hurtling down and smashed to the ground a few feet away.

Vietnam was my nightmare for a good ten years.