It won't hurt you. It's just to kill plants. It's called Agent Orange...and it won't bother humans.

Matterhorn is my metaphor of the Vietnam War - we built it, we abandoned it, we assaulted it, we lost, and then we abandoned it again.

I began writing 'Matterhorn' in 1975 and for more than 30 years I kept working on my novel in my spare time, unable to get an agent or publisher to even read the manuscript.

War is society's dirty work, usually done by kids cleaning up failures perpetrated by adults.

When the peace treaty is signed, the war isn't over for the veterans, or the family. It's just starting.

It was all absurd, without reason or meaning. People who didn't know each other were going to kill each other over a hill none of them cared about

The Marine Corps taught me how to kill, but it didn't teach me how to deal with killing.

Everything is touched by the holy when it is in the presence of death.

Once we recognize our shadow's existence we must resist the enticing step of going with its flow.

Quitting is unthinkable and pain is just weakness leaving the body

How could you get mad at someone who neither needed to attack nor was at all worried about being able to defend? It was like getting mad at Switzerland.

Science is good, is not God.

We define what we deserve, others also define what we deserve, apparently there is a huge difference and we spend our life constructing the same.

Flatter me, and I may not believe you. Criticize me, and I may not like you. Ignore me, and I may not forgive you. Encourage me, and I will not forget you. Love me and I may be forced to love you.

Gentlemen prefer blondes... but gentlemen marry brunettes.

I was a weak kid, not good at what all the boys at school were good at and I found that by acting, by being other people, I could liberate myself from those inadequacies.

It's a lot easier to like people when they can't make life miserable for you anymore.

You don't have to teach people how to be human. You have to teach them how to stop being inhuman.

Reclusive? The inner city will secure your privacy better than any desert cave.

The ideal of happiness has always taken material form in the house, whether cottage or castle; it stands for permanence and separation from the world.

Beauty attracts beauty. If you want to know what you are, look at what you are drawn to.