10 quotes
They carried all they could bear, and then some, including a silent awe for the power of the things they carried.
The Things They Carried (1990)
To generalize about war is like generalizing about peace. Almost everything is true. Almost nothing is true.
The Things They Carried (1990)
They carried the soldier's greatest fear, which was the fear of blushing. Men killed, and died, because they were embarrassed not to.
The Things They Carried (1990)
You were a treasonous pussy if you had second thoughts about killing and dying for plain and simple reasons.
The Things They Carried (1990)
They were afraid of dying but even more afraid to show it.
The Things They Carried (1990)
They carried all the emotional baggage of men who might die. Grief, terror, love, longing — these were intangibles, but the intangibles had their own mass and specific gravity, they had tangible weight.
The Things They Carried (1990)
Knowledge, of course, is always imperfect, but it seemed to me that when a nation goes to war it must have reasonable confidence in the justice and imperative of its cause. You can't fix your mistakes. Once people are dead, you can't make them undead.
The Things They Carried (1990)
Right then, with the shore so close, I understood that I would not do what I should do. I would not swim away from my hometown and my country and my life. I would not be brave.
The Things They Carried (1990)
I survived, but it's not a happy ending. I was a coward. I went to the war.
The Things They Carried (1990)
I would go to the war — I would kill and maybe die — because I was embarrassed not to. That was the sad thing. And so I sat in the bow of the boat and cried.
The Things They Carried (1990)