Apocalypse Now quotes

View Quote On the river, I thought that the minute I looked at him, I'd know what to do, but it didn't happen. I was in there with him for days, not under guard, I was free, but he knew I wasn't going anywhere. He knew more about what I was going to do than I did. If the Generals back in Nha Trang could see what I saw, would they still want me to kill him? More than ever, probably. And what would his people back home want if they ever learned just how far from them he'd really gone? He broke from them, and then he broke from himself. I'd never seen a man so broken up and ripped apart.

View Quote One through nine, no maybes, no supposes, no fractions. You can't travel in space, you can't go out into space, you know, without, like, you know, uh, with fractions – what are you going to land on – one-quarter, three-eighths? What are you going to do when you go from here to Venus or something? That's dialectic physics.

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

View Quote Part of me was afraid of what I would find and what I would do when I got there. I knew the risks, or imagined I knew. But the thing I felt the most, much stronger than fear, was the desire to confront him.

View Quote Saigon ... shit; I'm still only in Saigon ... Every time I think I'm gonna wake up back in the jungle. When I was home after my first tour, it was worse. I'd wake up and there'd be nothing. I hardly said a word to my wife, until I said "yes" to a divorce. When I was here, I wanted to be there; when I was there, all I could think of was getting back into the jungle. I'm 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. Each time I looked around, the walls moved in a little tighter.

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

View Quote Someday this war's gonna end. That'd be just fine with the boys on the boat. They weren't looking for anything more than a way home. Trouble is, I'd been back there, and I knew that it just didn't exist anymore.

View Quote The crew were mostly just kids. Rock 'n' rollers with one foot in their graves.

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

View Quote The machinist, the one they called Chef, was from New Orleans. He was wrapped too tight for Vietnam, probably wrapped too tight for New Orleans. Lance on the forward 50's was a famous surfer from the beaches south of L.A. You look at him and you wouldn't believe he ever fired a weapon in his whole life. Clean, Mr. Clean, was from some South Bronx shithole. The light and space of Vietnam really put the zap on his head. Then there was Phillips, the Chief. It might have been my mission, but it sure as shit was the Chief's boat.

View Quote There's mines over there, there's mines over there, and watch out those goddamn monkeys bite, I'll tell ya.

View Quote They were gonna make me a major for this, and I wasn't even in their ****in' army anymore.

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

View Quote This is the way the ****ing world ends. Look at this ****ing shit we're in man. Not with a bang, but with a whimper. And with a whimper, I'm ****ing splitting, Jack. (Note: This is a variation on T.S. Eliot's The Hollow Men – "This is the way the world ends, not with a bang but a whimper".)

View Quote Unass that shit, get it out of here.