Michael Herr Quotes

• How many times did someone have to run in front of a machine gun before it became an act of cowardice?

  Michael Herr

  Running, Gun, Machines

  Michael Herr (2011). “Dispatches”, p.66, Vintage

  49 Copy quote

• Vietnam was what we had instead of happy childhoods.

  Michael Herr

  War, Childhood, Vietnam

  Dispatches ch. 3 (1977)

  16 Copy quote

• All the wrong people remember Vietnam. I think all the people who remember it should forget it, and all the people who forgot it should remember it.

  Michael Herr

  Military, Thinking, People

  1989 In the Observer, 15 Jan.

  25 Copy quote

• What is the difference between the Marine Corps and the Boy Scouts?
  The Boy Scouts have adult leadership.

  Michael Herr

  Marine, Boys, Differences

  Michael Herr (2011). “Dispatches”, p.101, Vintage

  17 Copy quote

• Talk about impersonating an identity, about locking into a role, about irony; I went to cover the war and the war covered me; an old story, unless of course you've never heard it.

  Michael Herr

  War, Identity, Roles

  Michael Herr (2011). “Dispatches”, p.17, Vintage

  20 Copy quote

• We never announced a scorched-earth policy; we never announced any policy at all, apart from finding and destroying the enemy, and we proceeded in the most obvious way. We used what was at hand, dropping the greatest volume of explosives in the history of warfare over all the terrain within the thirty-mile sector which fanned out from Khe Sanh. Employing saturation-bombing techniques, we delivered more than 110,000 tons of bombs to those hills during the eleven-week containment of Khe Sanh.

  Michael Herr

  Hands, Enemy, Warfare

  Michael Herr (2011). “Dispatches”, p.153, Vintage

  10 Copy quote

• We came to fear something more complicated than death, an annihilation less final but more complete, and we got out. Becausewe all knew that if you stayed too long you became one of those poor bastards who had to have a war on all the time, and where was that?

  Michael Herr

  War, Long, Finals

  17 Copy quote

• Some people just wanted to blow it all to hell, animal, vegetable and mineral. They wanted a Vietnam they could fit into their car ashtrays.

  Michael Herr

  Animal, Blow, Vegetables

  Michael Herr (2011). “Dispatches”, p.59, Vintage

  9 Copy quote

• If war was hell and only hell and there were no other colors in the palate I don't think people would continue to make war.

  Michael Herr

  War, Thinking, Color

  10 Copy quote

• Every time I had a vision of myself lying dead somewhere, it was up there, in the Highlands.

  Michael Herr

  Lying, Vision

  10 Copy quote

• You can still see the shadow from when the Zeppelin floated over America; it took like Islam in the desert . . .

  Michael Herr

  America, Islam, Shadow

  10 Copy quote

• It's a corny old gag about Las Vegas, the temporal city if there ever was one, trying to camouflage the hours and retard the dawn, when everybody knows that if you're feeling lucky you're really feeling time in its rawest form, and if you're not feeling lucky, they've got a clock at the bus station.

  Michael Herr

  Cities, Vegas, Feelings

  Guy Peellaert, Michael Herr (1986). “The big room”

  7 Copy quote

• Maybe nothing's so unfunny as an omen read wrong.

  Michael Herr

  Omen

  Michael Herr (2011). “Dispatches”, p.47, Vintage

  7 Copy quote

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