Apocalypse Now

"I watched a snail crawl along the edge of a straight razor. Thats my dream. Thats my nightmare: crawling, slithering, along the edge of a straight razor and surviving."

"As long as cold beer, hot food, rock n roll, and all the other amenities remain expected norm, our conduct of the war will only gain impotence."

"Ive seen horrors, horrors that youve seen. But you have no right to call me a murderer. You have a right to kill me. You have a right to do that, but you have no right to judge me. Its impossible for words to describe what is necessary to those who do not know what horror means. Horror! Horror has a face, and you must make a friend of horror. Horror and moral terror are your friends. If they are not, then they are enemies to be feared. They are truly enemies."

"We train young men to drop fire on people, but their commanders wont allow them to write "fuck" on their airplanes because its obscene!"

"I worry that my son might not understand what Ive tried to be. And if I were to be killed, Willard, I would want someone to go to my home and tell my son everything — everything I did, everything you saw — because theres nothing that I detest more than the stench of lies. And if you understand me, Willard, you will do this for me."

"The horror ... the horror. [These are Kurtzs last words, and parallel those of the novellas Mr. Kurtz character.]"

"[voiceover] Everyone gets everything he wants. I wanted a mission, and for my sins, they gave me one. Brought it up to me like room service. It was a real choice mission, and when it was over, I never wanted another."

"[voiceover] Charlie didnt get much USO. He was dug in too deep or moving too fast. His idea of great R&R was cold rice and a little rat meat. He had only two ways home: death or victory."

"[voiceover] I was going to the worst place in the world, and I didnt even know it yet. Weeks away and hundreds of miles up a river that snaked through the war like a main circuit cable plugged straight into Kurtz. It was no accident that I got to be the caretaker of Colonel Walter E. Kurtzs memory any more than being back in Saigon was an accident. There is no way to tell his story without telling my own. And if his story really is a confession, then so is mine."

"[voiceover] Oh, man. The bullshit piled up so fast in Vietnam you needed wings to stay above it."

"[voiceover] Its a way we had over here with living with ourselves. We cut em in half with a machine gun and give em a Band-Aid. It was a lie, and the more I saw them, the more I hated lies. Those boys were never gonna look at me the same way again, but I felt like I knew one or two things about Kurtz that werent in the dossier. Do Lung Bridge was the last Army outpost in the Nung River. Beyond it, there was only Kurtz."

"Have you ever considered any real freedoms? Freedoms from the opinion of others... even the opinions of yourself?"