Michael Herr

What's the difference between a lawyer and a hooker? A hooker'll stop screwing you when you're dead.

How do you know when a lawyer is lying? When his lips are moving.

In my first year of law school everybody loved everybody else, 'cause we were all studying the law, and the law was a noble thing. By my third year you were lucky if you weren't murdered in your sleep. People stole exams, hid research materials from the library, and lied to the professors. Such is the nature of the profession.

My dad hated lawyers. You might think I became one just to piss him off, but you'd be wrong. Did piss him off so much though that when he heard he fell off a ladder and didn't know who to sue first.

There's gotta be a hundred years of law experience sitting at this very table. My staff has flunked the bar exam six times.

Sworn in by a fool and vouched for by a scoundrel. I'm a lawyer at last.

My father hated lawyers all his life. He wasn't a great guy, my old man. He drank and beat up my mother; he beat me up too. So you might think I became a lawyer just to piss him off. But you'd be wrong. I wanted to be a lawyer ever since I read about the Civil Rights lawyers in the 50s and 60s, and the amazing uses they found for the law. They did what a lot of people thought was the impossible. They gave lawyers a good name. And so I went to law school. And it did piss my father off - he was pissed off anyway.

I knew exactly what was going on here. Just like when Daddy was in the bedroom crying and Mommy was sitting in the kitchen, face all bloody, saying that Daddy was sorry.

I'm hot. In fact, I'm so hot, there's no place for me to go but down. Every client I ever have will expect the same magic, nothing less. I could probably give it to them, if it didn't matter how I did it. Then I'd wake up one morning and find that I'd become Leo Drummond

Half an hour ago her husband came in and threw a bowl of soup at her, because she just didn't get how much he loved her.

Every lawyer, at least once in every case, feels himself crossing a line that he doesn't really mean to cross. It just happens, and if you cross it enough times it disappears forever. And then you're nothing but another lawyer joke, just another shark in the dirty water.

A lawyer's not supposed to become personally involved with his clients. but there's all kinds of lawyers. and all kinds of clients, too.

I bet you're the kind of guy that would fuck a person in the ass and not even have the goddamn common courtesy to give him a reach-around. I'll be watching you.

I am Gunnery Sergeant Hartman, your senior drill instructor. From now on you will speak only when spoken to, and the first and last words out of your filthy sewers will be "Sir". Do you maggots understand that?

Bullshit, I can't hear you. Sound off like you got a pair!

If you ladies leave my island, if you survive recruit training, you will be a weapon. You will be a minister of death praying for war. But until that day, you are pukes. You are the lowest form of life on Earth. You are not even human fucking beings. You are nothing but unorganized grab-asstic pieces of amphibian shit! Because I am hard, you will not like me. But the more you hate me, the more you will learn. I am hard but I am fair. There is no racial bigotry here. I do not look down on niggers, kikes, wops or greasers. Here you are all equally worthless. And my orders are to weed out all non-hackers who do not pack the gear to serve in my beloved Corps. Do you maggots understand that?

What is this Mickey Mouse shit? What in the name of Jesus H. Christ are you animals doing in my head? Why is Private Pyle out of his bunk after lights-out? Why is Private Pyle holding that weapon? Why aren't you stomping Private Pyle's guts out?

Now, you listen to me, Private Pyle. And you listen good. I want that weapon, and I want it now. You will place that rifle on the deck at your feet, and step back away from it.

What is your major malfunction, numbnuts? Didn't Mommy and Daddy show you enough attention when you were a child?

Today... is Christmas! There will be a magic show at zero-nine-thirty! Chaplain Charlie will tell you about how the free world will conquer Communism with the aid of God and a few Marines! God has a hard-on for Marines because we kill everything we see! He plays His games, we play ours! To show our appreciation for so much power, we keep heaven packed with fresh souls! God was here before the Marine Corps! So you can give your heart to Jesus, but your ass belongs to the Corps! Do you ladies understand?

Today, you people are no longer maggots. Today, you are Marines. You're part of a brotherhood. From now on until the day you die, wherever you are, every Marine is your brother. Most of you will go to Vietnam. Some of you will not come back. But always remember this: Marines die. That's what we're here for. But the Marine Corps lives forever. And that means YOU live forever.

Tonight, you pukes will sleep with your rifles. You will give your rifle a girl's name because this is the only pussy you people are going to get. Your days of finger-banging ol' Mary-Jane Rottencrotch through her pretty pink panties are over! You're married to this piece. This weapon of iron and wood. And you will be faithful. Port, hut!

The deadliest weapon in the world is a Marine and his rifle. It is your killer instinct which must be harnessed if you expect to survive in combat. Your rifle is only a tool. It is a hard heart that kills. If your killer instincts are not clean and strong you will hesitate at the moment of truth. You will not kill. You will become dead marines and then you will be in a world of shit because marines are not allowed to die without permission. Do you maggots understand?

Private Pyle has dishonored himself and dishonored the platoon. I have tried to help him. But I have failed. I have failed because YOU have not helped me. YOU people have not given Private Pyle the proper motivation! So, from now on, whenever Private Pyle fucks up, I will not punish him! I will punish all of YOU! And the way I see it ladies, you owe me for ONE JELLY DOUGHNUT! NOW GET ON YOUR FACES!

Are you quitting on me? Well, are you? Then quit, you slimy fucking walrus-looking piece of shit! Get the fuck off of my obstacle! Get the fuck down off of my obstacle! NOW! MOVE IT! Or I'm going to rip your balls off, so you cannot contaminate the rest of the world! I will motivate you, Private Pyle, IF IT SHORT-DICKS EVERY CANNIBAL ON THE CONGO!

All right, knock it off! Two hundred and fifty feet! He was two hundred and fifty feet away and shooting at a moving target. Oswald got off three rounds with an old Italian bolt action rifle in only six seconds and scored two hits, including a head shot! Do any of you people know where these individuals learned to shoot? Private Joker?

Who said that? Who the fuck said that? Who's the slimy little communist shit twinkle-toed cocksucker down here, who just signed his own death warrant? Nobody, huh? The fairy fucking godmother said it! Out-fuckingstanding! I will P.T. you all until you fucking die! I'll P.T. you until your assholes are sucking buttermilk.

Saigon… shit; I'm still only in Saigon… Every time I think I'm gonna wake up back in the jungle. When I was home after my first tour, it was worse. I'd wake up and there'd be nothing. I hardly said a word to my wife, until I said "yes" to a divorce. When I was here, I wanted to be there; when I was there, all I could think of was getting back into the jungle. I'm here a week now... waiting for a mission... getting softer. Every minute I stay in this room, I get weaker, and every minute Charlie squats in the bush, he gets stronger. Each time I looked around the walls moved in a little tighter.

I was going to the worst place in the world and I didn't 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. Kurtz's 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.

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.

How many people had I already killed? There were those six that I knew about for sure. Close enough to blow their last breath in my face. But this time, it was an American and an officer. That wasn't supposed to make any difference to me, but it did. Shit… charging a man with murder in this place was like handing out speeding tickets in the Indy 500. I took the mission. What the hell else was I gonna do?

In a war there are many moments for compassion and tender action. There are many moments for ruthless action - what is often called ruthless - what may in many circumstances be only clarity, seeing clearly what there is to be done and doing it, directly, quickly, awake, looking at it.

As for the charges against me, I am unconcerned. I am beyond their timid lying morality, and so I am beyond caring.

It's a way we had over here for 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.

Well, he wasn't a bad officer, I guess. He loved his boys, and he felt safe with 'em. He was just one of those guys with that weird light around him. He just knew he wasn't gonna get so much as a scratch here.

I've seen horrors... horrors that you've 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. It's 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! I remember when I was with Special Forces... seems a thousand centuries ago. We went into a camp to inoculate some children. We left the camp after we had inoculated the children for polio, and this old man came running after us and he was crying. He couldn't see. We went back there, and they had come and hacked off every inoculated arm. There they were in a pile. A pile of little arms. And I remember... I... I... I cried, I wept like some grandmother. I wanted to tear my teeth out; I didn't know what I wanted to do! And I want to remember it. I never want to forget it... I never want to forget. And then I realized... like I was shot... like I was shot with a diamond... a diamond bullet right through my forehead. And I thought, my God... the genius of that! The genius! The will to do that! Perfect, genuine, complete, crystalline, pure. And then I realized they were stronger than we, because they could stand that these were not monsters, these were men... trained cadres. These men who fought with their hearts, who had families, who had children, who were filled with love... but they had the strength... the strength... to do that. If I had ten divisions of those men, our troubles here would be over very quickly. You have to have men who are moral... and at the same time who are able to utilize their primordial instincts to kill without feeling... without passion... without judgment... without judgment! Because it's judgment that defeats us.

We train young men to drop fire on people, but their commanders won't allow them to write "fuck" on their airplanes because it's obscene!

I watched a snail crawl along the edge of a straight razor. That's my dream; that's my nightmare. Crawling, slithering, along the edge of a straight razor... and surviving.

They train young men to drop fire on people. But their commanders won't allow them to write 'fuck' on their airplanes because it is obscene.

I worry that my son might not understand what I've 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 there's nothing that I detest more than the stench of lies. And if you understand me, Willard, you will do this for me.

I went down that river once when I was a kid. There's a place in that river - I can't remember - must have been a gardenia plantation at one time. It's all wild and overgrown now, but about five miles, you'd think that heaven just fell on the earth in the form of gardenias. Have you considered any real freedoms? Freedoms from the opinions of others. Even the opinions of yourself.

We must kill them. We must incinerate them. Pig after pig… cow after cow… village after village… army after army…

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.

The horror… the horror…