"A true war story is never moral. It does not instruct, nor encourage virtue, nor suggest proper models of human behavious, nor restrain men from doing the things men have always done. If a story seems moral, do not believe it. If at the the end of a war story you feel uplifted, or if you feel that some small bit of rectitutde has been salvaged from the larger waste, then you have been made a victim of a very old and terrible lie."
O'Brien--The Things They Carried

 

"Dulce et decorum est pro patria mori" (It is sweet to die for one's country)
Horace

 

"The impressive collection of class rings encased in glass in the foyer [at West Point] becomes ghoulish once you realize that most of the jewelry has been donated by the families of graduates who have been killed."
Samet--Soldier's Heart

 

“If anything characterizes the 21st century, it’s our inability to restrain ourselves for the benefit of other people,”
James Katz, Director of the Center for Mobile Communication Studies at Rutgers University

 

“So what’s the point? The point is Vietnam. The point is Vietnam. The point is Vietnam.”
Denis Johnson - Tree of Smoke

 

“I don’t want to talk about the Vietcong. The Communists believe only in the future. In its name they’ll destroy everything, they’ll fill the future with nothing. I want to talk about the Americans.”
Johnson - Tree of Smoke