Apocalypse Now (1979)

[While flying in a helicopter with Air Cavalry soldiers] Chef: Why do all you guys sit on your helmets? Soldier: So we don't get our balls blown off.

Captain Benjamin L. Willard: I hardly said a word to my wife until I said yes to a divorce.

Captain Benjamin L. Willard: Been 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.



Colonel Walter E. Kurtz: 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.

Captain Benjamin L. Willard: How many people had I already killed? There was those six that I know 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?

Col. Kurtz: What do you call assassins who accuse assassins?

Captain Benjamin L. Willard: Oh man, the shit piled up so fast in Vietnam you needed wings to stay above it.

Captain Benjamin L. Willard: No wonder Kurtz put a weed up Command's ass. The war was being run by a bunch of four star clowns who were gonna end up giving the whole circus away.

Lance: Disneyland. Fuck, man, this is better than Disneyland.

Chef: I used to think if I died in an evil place then my soul wouldn't make it to heaven. Well, fuck. I don't care where it goes as long it ain't here.

Freelance Photographer: He likes you because you're still alive.

Willard: He came from some South Bronx shit-hole, and I think the light and space of Vietnam really put the zap on his brain.

Lieutenant Colonel Kilgore: You either surf or you fight.

Lieutenant Colonel Kilgore: If I say it's safe to surf this beach, it's safe to surf this beach!

Lieutenant Colonel Kilgore: Charlie don't surf!

Captain Benjamin L. Willard: They were gonna make me a major for this, and I wasn't even in their fuckin' army anymore.

Freelance Photographer: There's mines over there, there's mines over there, and watch out those goddamn monkeys bite, I'll tell ya.

Lieutenant Colonel Kilgore: You smell that? Do 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 twelve 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... [Walks off unhappily]

Colonel Walter E. Kurtz: I've seen the 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.

Colonel Walter E. Kurtz: 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.

Captain Benjamin L. Willard: Everybody wanted me to do it, him most of all. I felt like he was up there, waiting for me to take the pain away. He just wanted to go out like a soldier, standing up, not like some poor, wasted, rag-assed renegade. Even the jungle wanted him dead, and that's who he really took his orders from anyway.

[His last words] Colonel Walter E. Kurtz: The horror. The horror.

Lieutenant Colonel Kilgore: What the hell do you know about surfing? You're from goddamned New Jersey.

The Photojournalist: This is the way the fucking world ends. Look at this fucking shit we're in man. Not with a bang, but with a whimper. And with a whimper, I'm fucking splitting, Jack.