The fresh eyes of the recruits needed to be dulled into a haggard stare. Their faces needed to lose the softness of childhood and assume, via some alchemy of sunburn, sweat, and responsibility, the definition of adults.
-- Narrator - Matti Friedman (Chapter 3)

Importance: This quote demonstrates how military service is an active and conscious process of coming-of-age, and therefore a loss of innocence. It is not merely a side effect of being in the army; it is a necessary process. This quote also emphasizes the age of the recruits and reminds readers that these soldiers are still teenagers who are merely on the cusp of adulthood. Because military service is mandatory for so many Israelis, this hardening into adulthood is not unique to one segment of the population but is a communal experience of coming-of-age and losing innocence which many share.

In the years of these events, the 1990s, many people in Israel thought peace was...
-- Narrator - Matti Friedman (Chapter 6)