Really Important Books To Me Are The

He Thought Of The Jungle, Already Regrowing Around Him To Cover The Scars They Had Created. He Thought Of The Tiger, Killing To Eat. Was That Evil? And Ants? They Killed. No, The Jungle Wasn’t Evil. It Was Indifferent. So, Too, Was The World. Evil, Then, Must Be The Negation Of Something Man Had Added To The World. Ultimately, It Was Caring About Something That Made The World Liable To Evil. Caring. And Then The Caring Gets Torn Asunder. Everybody Dies, But Not Everybody Cares.

I Don't Want Any Romantics To Go Into The Military. I'm Not A Pacifist. I Think We Need A Military, And The Better One We Have, The Better Off We Are. I Don't Want Kids Going In There Thinking That It's John Wayne On Iwo Jima. That's Not Healthy.

Matterhorn Is My Metaphor Of The Vietnam War - We Built It, We Abandoned It, We Assaulted It, We Lost, And Then We Abandoned It Again.

He Lay Before God As A Woman Opens Herself To A Man, With Legs Apart, Stomach Exposed, Arms Open. But Unlike Some Women, He Did Not Have The Inner Strength That Allowed Them To Do Such A Thing Without Fear. There Was No Woman’s Strength In Mellas At All.

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.