Apocalypse Now quotes

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

View Quote I went down that river once when I was a kid. There's a place in the river.. I can't remember... Must have been a gardenia plantation at one time. All wild and overgrown now, but for about five miles you'd think that heaven just fell on the earth in the form of gardenias...

View Quote Hey, man, you don't talk to the Colonel. You listen to him. The man's enlarged my mind. He's a poet-warrior in the classic sense. I mean, sometimes he'll, uh, well, you'll say "Hello" to him, right? And he'll just walk right by you, and he won't even notice you. And suddenly he'll grab you, and he'll throw you in a corner, and he'll say "Do you know that 'if' is the middle word in life? 'If you can keep your head when all about you are losing theirs and blaming it on you, if you can trust yourself when all men doubt you'..." – I mean, I'm no, I can't – I'm a little man, I'm a little man, he's, he's a great man. I should have been a pair of ragged claws scuttling across floors of silent seas – I mean –...(Note: This is a variation on T.S. Eliot's The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock, with the 'If you can keep your head...' a quote from Rudyard Kipling's If)

View Quote Late summer-autumn 1968: Kurtz's patrols in the highlands coming under frequent ambush. The camp started falling apart ... November: Kurtz orders the assassination of three Vietnamese men and one woman. Two of the men were Colonels in the South Vietnamese army. Enemy activity in his old sector dropped off to nothing. Guess he must have hit the right four people. The army tried one last time to bring him back into the fold. And if he pulled over, it all would have been forgotten. But he kept going, and he kept winning it his way, and they called me in. They lost him. He was gone. Nothing but rumors and random intelligence, mostly from captured VC. The VC knew his name by now, and they were scared of him. He and his men were playing hit and run all the way into Cambodia.

View Quote Any man brave enough to fight with his guts strapped on him can drink from my canteen anyday.

View Quote You're neither! You're an errand boy sent by grocery clerks....to collect a bill.

View Quote Which way, Captain? (Willard replies, "you know the way, Chief") You're on your own, Captain. Still wanna go on? Like this bridge: we build it every night. Charlie blows it right back up again. Just so the generals can say the road's open. Think about it. Who cares?

View Quote Willard: How long has this kid been on this boat?
Chief Phillips: Seven months.
Willard: He's really specializing in busting my balls.
Chief Phillips: Very possible, Captain, he thinks the same of you ...
Willard: Oh yeah? And what you think, Chief?
Chief Phillips: I don't think! My orders say I'm not supposed to know where I'm taking this boat, so I don't! But one look at you and I know it's gonna be hot, wherever it is. (Brief pause)
Willard: We're going about 70 klicks above the Do Lung bridge.
Chief Phillips: That's Cambodia, Captain.
Willard: That's classified. We're not supposed to be in Cambodia, but that's where I'm going. You just get me close to my destination, and I cut you and the crew loose.
Chief Phillips: All right, Captain.

View Quote Outstanding, Red Team, outstanding! Getcha a case of beer for that one.

View Quote They'd traded in their horses for choppers, and went tear-assing around 'Nam looking for the shit ...

View Quote The horror ... the horror ... (Kurtz' last words)

View Quote Roxanne: Do you know why you can never step into the same river twice?
Willard: Yeah, 'cause it's always moving.

View Quote (Referring to Kurtz) I mean, what are they gonna say about him, when he's gone, huh? What are they gonna say? Are they gonna say "he was a kind man"? "He was a wise man"? "He had plans"; "He had wisdom"? Bullshit, man! What are they gonna do when he's gone? What are they gonna turn to me? I mean come on, look at me! Am I gonna set them straight, NO...You[Willard].

View Quote We train young men to drop fire on people. But their commanders won't allow them to write "****" on their airplanes because it's obscene!

View Quote Someday this war's gonna end ...