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

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

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

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.

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.

I think imagination is one of the greatest blessings of life, and while one can lose oneself in a book one can never be thoroughly unhappy.

A man's friendships are one of the best measures of his worth.

We imagined that the mildness of our government and the wishes of the people were so correspondent that we were not as other nations, requiring brutal force to support the laws.

Not everyone can see the truth, but he can be it.

Many men are deeply moved by the mere semblance of suffering in a woman; they take the look of pain for a sign of constancy or of love.

I suppose no person ever enjoyed with more relish the infusion of that fragrant leaf than Johnson.

I know my name will always be linked with women.

Once created, federal programs are nearly impossible to eliminate.

I would have voted against the Civil Rights Act of 1964.

A positive attitude does not cure cancer, any more than a negative one causes it.