Quotes & Sayings About Vietnam In The Things They Carried

I was a grunt, walking around in the jungle of Vietnam, trying not to find the enemy. Because I am so big, they were going to give me either a heavy radio or a huge machine gun to carry. I carried a radio. — Bob Gunton

But this too is true: stories can save us. — Tim O'Brien

Kennedy was haunted by the Bay of Pigs invasion but carried the country through the Cuban Missile Crisis. He later increased the number of U.S. military advisers to South Vietnam to more than 16,000. — Kitty Kelley

Stories can save us. — Tim O'Brien

And sometimes remembering will lead to a story, which makes it forever. — Tim O'Brien

Don't throw away luck on little stuff. Save it up. — Tim O'Brien

Lonnie smiled and nodded as Herbert repocketed the cutter and produced a chopped-down, brass Zippo lighter, the one that he had carried in the seventies in Vietnam. St. Peter leaned down to the Crow woman and asked her if she had anything she wanted to say, and she told him that to her, there — Craig Johnson

None of the people's wars of the sixties did very well, including the one in Vietnam. Vo Nguyen Giap himself has admitted a loss of 600,000 men between 1965 and 1968 ... Moreover, by about 1970 at least 80% of the day-to-day combat in South Vietnam was being carried on by regular NVA troops ... Genuine black-pajama southern guerrillas had been decimated and amounted to no more than 20% of the communist fighting forces. — Chalmers Johnson

Each morning, despite the unknowns, they made their legs move. — Tim O'Brien

The fourteen-man snake moved in spasms ... Their eyes flickered rapidly back and forth as they tried to look in all directions at once. They carried Kool-Aid packages, Tang - anything to kill the chemical taste of the water in their plastic canteens. Soon the smears of purple and orange Kool-Aid on their lips combined with the fear in their eyes to make them look like children returning from a birthday party at which the hostess had shown horror films. — Karl Marlantes

Tim O'Brien's book about Vietnam, 'The Things They Carried', has won every award, is studied in college and is considered to be definitive. But it's fiction. — Dave Eggers