I knew the pressure would be huge. I knew Manchester United was a massive club and a big challenge for me. Hopefully I'm proving to people that I can rise to the challenge.

I've said before I've always believed in my ability.

Training with world-class players week in, week out has only made me a better player and I'm thankful for that.

The thing that's stood out since I've joined United is the desire to win every single game. It means everything to win at this club. I'm just glad to be a part of it.

I think I'm more than capable of playing in positions such as right-back, centre-back and centre-mid.

I think it's brilliant to see players you've grown up with on the international stage come through to senior level.

Being at United in my first season has really given me an insight into the passion and drive the club has.

If you are enjoying your football, you see it on the pitch.

It's brilliant for me to even be considered as being a player who could become as good as Duncan Edwards was.

I want to be remembered one day as a great player, good athlete and a good professional.

One of my strong points is that, no matter what anyone says about me, it will not affect me, it's because I believe in my ability and what I can achieve.

It doesn't matter what anyone tells me, I know that I can rely on myself. It comes from my parents. They are the same strong-minded people as I am and I just don't let anyone bring me down.

I just love to defend!

It's the striker's job to put the ball in the net and it's up to us to make important tackles and blocks.

If we make an important block, it can be like a goal.

I have said from day one I see myself as a center back. But, if I am asked to play in midfield or at right-back, I am happy to do so.

As long as I am in the team, it doesn't matter whether I am in goal.

You win some, you lose some and then you get on with it.

I don't care how good you are, teams can be put under pressure.

I think England is the best league for me, for my style of play.

Hopefully, I can stay in the Premier League for my whole career.

Schweinsteiger has got class, he's won the World Cup, he's won everything in the game and he's got experience and that's massive, especially at Manchester United.

Players like routines. They like to know what they're doing in the week and in training.

When the chips are down, you see who the real fighters are. That is the beauty of Manchester United.

I am not one who needs to be patted on the back every single day and told I am brilliant. Some players need that, I don't.

As long as I am playing and enjoying playing, then that is all that matters.

Football's football, it can change very quickly. I know that, I've experienced that many times.

Consistency is key in any sport and it's no different here.

United need to be in the Champions League.

Teams like Bayern are who you want to be playing; if you want to test yourselves against the best you have to play them.

The manager picks the team and the team has got to go out and do its best.

My mates will tell me they saw me in the newspaper linked to this club and that club, but to be honest it goes in one ear and out the other.

Resilience is, of course, necessary for a warrior. But a lack of empathy isn't.

I don't believe in any Greatest Generation. I believe in great events. They sweep ordinary people up, expose them to extremes of human behavior and unimaginable tests of integrity and courage, and then deposit them back on the home front.

In war, it feels like everything you're doing is more important because you're in the proximity of violence and death, and that proximity changes your relationship to America because it changes the way you see the world.

The civilian wants to respect what the veteran has gone through. The veteran wants to protect memories that are painful and sacred to him from outside judgment.

'Redeployment' is a military term. It means to transfer a unit from one area to another.

I got to travel around Anbar Province, had a great group of Marines who worked for me who traveled around Anbar Province. I got to hang out with a lot of different types of Marines and soldiers and sailors.

There's a very particular way that the military speaks. There's a lot of profanity and a lot of acronyms.

With fiction, you can take something that bothers you, or that you don't have in clear focus, and you can put it under as much stress as you want. Really get underneath the skin. With nonfiction, you're restricted to what happened.

There's a tradition in war writing that the veteran goes over and sees the truth of war and comes back. And I'm skeptical of that.

If you're going to write about war, the ugly side is inevitable. Suffering and death are obviously part of war.

There's a tendency to look at anybody who joined the military as if they underwrote everything that happened policy-wise. That's not really the case. I have a friend who both protested the Iraq War and joined the military, and ended up serving two deployments in Afghanistan.

I don't want to act as though my deployment was particularly rough, because it wasn't. I had a very mild deployment; I was a staff officer.

Prayer in a combat zone serves exactly the same purpose as it does in peacetime. In war, the stakes are life and death, true; but if you believe in God and in the notion of a human soul, then we are always making decisions of tremendous significance.

It's a professional military. You sign up and agree to allow your countrymen to use your life as they see fit for the next four years. And I think we all should have a greater role in ensuring that we use those lives wisely.

It's easier to get people to talk to you if you're a vet and you want to interview a vet about war. Sometimes they open up a little bit easier.

Bombs do very, very bad things to human bodies. It's incredibly shocking to see.

Pity addresses the perceived suffering, not the whole individual.

I literally went straight to New York City from Iraq, which was bizarre and complicated. I was walking down Madison Avenue, and it was spring, and people were smartly dressed, and it was so strange because there was no sense that we were at war. It was something to grapple with.