And when I was in the delivery room, waking up from the ether, I asked the nurse whether it was a boy or a girl. She said it was a girl – and I turned my head to the side and cried. And then I said, I hope she grows up to be a pretty little fool. That’s about the best a girl can hope for these days, to be a pretty little fool.
You can’t repeat the past? Of course you can.
There was music from my neighbor’s house through those summer nights. In his enchanted gardens, men and girls came and went like moths, among the whispering and the champagne and the stars. I believe that few people were actually invited to these parties. They just went. They got into automobiles that bore them out to Long Island, and somehow they ended up at Gatsby’s door. Come for the party with a simplicity of heart that was it’s own ticket of admission.
Now I want you to remember that no bastard ever won a war by dying for his country. He won it by making the other poor dumb bastard die for his country.
Smell that? You smell that? … Napalm, son. Nothing else in the world smells like that. … I love the smell of napalm in the morning. You know, one time we had a hill bombed, for 12 hours. When it was all over, I walked up. We didn’t find one of ’em, not one stinkin’ dink body. The smell, you know that gasoline smell, the whole hill. Smelled like victory. Someday this war’s gonna end…
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.