I mean, if you're proud of what you've done when you've served in the military, well then we call that bragging. And if you are unhappy about what happened, we call that complaining. And so what are you going to do?

When I first got back from the war, I said, 'I'm gonna write the Great American Novel about the Vietnam War.' So I sat down and wrote 1,700 pages of sheer psychotherapy drivel. It was first person, and there would be pages about wet socks and cold feet.

When the peace treaty is signed, the war isn't over for the veterans, or the family. It's just starting.

War is society's dirty work, usually done by kids cleaning up failures perpetrated by adults.

I mean... if you're raised as a decent human being, killing somebody is against every moral thing you've ever been taught. And so, generally, in combat it's 'krauts,' the 'gooks,' the 'yanks' - whatever you want to do to try and make it so that it's not a human being.

Quitting is unthinkable and pain is just weakness leaving the body

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