Back home I thought mosquitoes never bit black people. Not as much as they bit white people, anyway. Maybe Vietnamese mosquitoes just bit blacks and whites and didn’t bite Asians. (Chapter 2)

Stay away from dope. There’s only two kinds of people in Nam. People who are alert twenty-four hours a day, and people who are dead. (Chapter 2)

Jenkins had been walking with me and talking with me only hours before. Seeing him lying there like that, his mouth and eyes open, had grabbed something inside my chest and twisted it hard. (Chapter 4)

I thought of saying a prayer, but I couldn’t think of one. I didn’t know one prayer. Under my breath I apologized to God. (Chapter 5)

They hadn’t died facing the enemy. They just died because somebody else was scared, maybe careless. They died because they were in Nam, where being scared made you do things you would... (Chapter 8)