How we cite our quotes: All quotations are from Apocalypse Now.
Quote #1
WILLARD: 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.
Willard's been at war so long that he's more adjusted to being in the war than in normal life. Makes you think of all the vets who struggle to adjust to civilian life after what they've witnessed.
Quote #2
KURTZ: We must kill them. We must incinerate them. Pig after pig...cow after cow...village after village...army after army...
This is Kurtz's whole philosophy of war: total annihilation. The key to success is complete ruthlessness. Holding back just enables the enemy and extends the war. You can't keep doing this and hang on to your sanity.
Quote #3
KILGORE: Charlie don't surf!
It's this mentality that allows Kilgore to be so casually destructive. He dismisses the value of another culture and figures that the Americans have the rights to this particular beach even if they have to destroy the adjacent village.
Quote #4
KILGORE: I love the smell of napalm in the morning. You know, one time we had a hill bombed, for 12 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.
Kilgore's so hopped up on the war that the smell of napalm—a blazing gel that burns people to death—makes him feel great. This is a hint to the viewer that Kilgore has…let's just say, lost perspective. War's a game to him. He's a little wistful when he says that someday the war's gonna end.
Quote #5
WILLARD: "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.
Willard thinks that the young guys are probably a little less sentimental about war than Kilgore. "Home" doesn't exist anymore—either because the war has ruined their ability to relate to normal home life or because the tensions over the war have changed the U.S. When then the Vietnam vets got home, in many cases they were treated like murderers and called "baby-killers" because the war was so unpopular.
Lots of the people who called them that, btw, were young people of draft age (19-26) who didn't enlist and were just lucky enough not to get drafted. The Vietnam draft was based on birth dates, which were randomly drawn in a lottery. If you were a man (women weren't in the draft pool) born on September 14, for example, your number came up first and you were called up. They got through the first 195 birthdays and that satisfied the need for servicemen. You can imagine how guys felt sitting by the radio listening to the birthdays being read.
Quote #6
WILLARD: Well, he [Kilgore] wasn't a bad officer, I guess. He loved his boys, and he felt safe with 'em. He was just one of those guys with that weird light around him. He just knew he wasn't gonna get so much as a scratch here.
Kilgore might feel invulnerable, but he subjects his men to unnecessary danger, like ordering them to go surfing while a battle is still raging. Willard's right—he does seem to have a force field around him.
Quote #7
WILLARD (quoting Kurtz): In a war there are many moments for compassion and tender action. There are many moments for ruthless action—what is often called ruthless—what may in many circumstances be only clarity, seeing clearly what there is to be done and doing it, directly, quickly, awake, looking at it.
Kurtz doesn't see his ruthlessness as excessive—just as something necessary to win the war. He thinks it's important to be able to separate moral judgment from the actions that need to be taken to win the war.
Quote #8
KURTZ: I remember when I was with Special Forces...seems a thousand centuries ago. We went into a camp to inoculate some children. We left the camp after we had inoculated the children for polio, and this old man came running after us and he was crying. He couldn't see. We went back there, and they had come and hacked off every inoculated arm. There they were in a pile. A pile of little arms. And I remember...I...I...I cried, I wept like some grandmother. I wanted to tear my teeth out; I didn't know what I wanted to do!
Kurtz at one time had compassion. He still thinks he has compassion—he's just able to put it aside in order to do what it takes to win the war.
Quote #9
KURTZ: You have to have men who are moral...and at the same time who are able to utilize their primordial instincts to kill without feeling...without passion...without judgment...without judgment! Because it's judgment that defeats us.
Kurtz isn't a fan of letting your morals get in the way of doing your soldierly duty. He thinks it'll just lead you to wimping out and not doing what really needs to be done.
Quote #10
KURTZ: We train young men to drop fire on people, but their commanders won't allow them to write "f***" on their airplanes because it's obscene!
Here's an insight into one of the many moral paradoxes of war. You can see how Kurtz has given up on the Army's logic and is living by his own set of rules now. He doesn't see his reasoning as any more twisted than the Army's.
Quote #11
KURTZ: The horror...the horror...
Kurtz is lost in a universe of pain. No wonder he kinda wants Willard to put him out of his misery. There's still ambiguity in these last word. Is he talking about the horrors of the war? The horrors he's inflicted himself? Maybe he's just fond of quoting Joseph Conrad.