Message From Nam Quotes
"Mercifully, at one-fifty the bell rang, all doors opened and waves of high school students poured into the halls, freed from quizzes, lectures, French literature, and the pharaohs of Egypt."
"She was filled with love for everyone, but most especially for children and babies, and she loved Paxton with a passion and a warmth that no mother could have surpassed."
"You can’t turn an entire country around, and change traditions that people have felt comfortable with for hundreds of years and not pay a price for it."
"Paxton wanted to go away from their narrow ideas, from her mother’s friends, from the things she heard about the 'horrors of integration.'"
"She had a passion about the important events going on around the world, and their links and ties and effect on each other."
"Her father had been fifty-seven years old when he died, and John Kennedy was only forty-six, and yet both had been cut down in the prime of their lives."
"She was quiet and strong, and whole, which was rare for a girl her age."
"Maybe that school in Berkeley gonna be your solution."
"I'm here on a scholarship, and I've got to make the grades, or I'm gonna be out on my black ass and back in Alabama before I know it."
"I’ve spent my whole life watching people indulge themselves and not give a damn about anyone else. I don’t want to do that."
"You can’t begin to imagine how I missed you."
"I don’t know what to do, Pax … I don’t want to do anything that’ll hurt you … now or later … I love you so much …"
"You have to be sure, especially if you’re going to have a baby."
"All I want to know is if you love me." His eyes bore into hers and she nodded seriously.
"It’s written all over him. If you let him, he’ll use you and throw you away. That’s what they all do."
"I think your son is seriously smitten, my love."
"Something tells me that there’s a lot she wants to do with her life."
"I’m not sure I do. I just want to make a difference somewhere."
"If the mouthpiece here will let you. I don’t know how you stand it."
"Isn’t this just my luck," Gabby complained as they got into bed.
"We might as well make the best of it. I love her, she loves me, and we’re going to have a wonderful baby."
"You’d better be ready for that, Pax. I’ll be an old man by then."
"Sometimes life makes you sorry when you wait too long."
"I swear I’ll come back to you … in one piece … and ready to get married and have fourteen babies."
"He was the one out ahead … He didn’t take a hill … or get shot … or level a village … he didn’t even step on a mine … he was killed by what they call ‘friendly fire,’"
"You look like a kid who just took a fall in the dirt."
"I'm finally beginning to understand what I've heard."
"I'm fine" was all she said in answer to his questions.
"It was a powerful piece and she was pleased."
"She was so drawn to him, she could hardly make sense in his presence."
"The things you used to care about don't matter much anymore, the house, the car, all the little bullshit stuff that used to seem so important."
"I should be back in Saigon in a few days, I'll call you before I come."
"You're a brave girl," he said then, remembering her willingness to go down into the tunnel.
"I never thought I'd leave my wife," he said honestly, as they walked along.
"I think I'm in love with you. Is it possible for a grown man to fall in love with a girl in a place like this and have anything good come of it?"
"I can’t help what happened. It did. It’s there. I can’t pretend it isn’t."
"Maybe you just think that because of Bill," he said hopefully.
"It’s not too late for you. I’m telling you… don’t get mixed up with Bill."
"Do you know what it takes to stay alive here? You gotta crawl on your belly every day, and think of only one thing, yourself."
"You couldn’t stay away from the places where they’d gotten hurt or out of the places they’d been. There were too many painful memories."
"It’s no sweat, if you want we’ll turn back. You don’t have to come on this one."
"You’ll never believe who I ran into yesterday, on the terrace of the Continental Palace after you left."
"No, you shouldn’t. Maybe I need to face this."
"I slept for about twenty hours after I left you. I didn’t even bother to take my clothes off."
"We just have to take what we can while we can get it. And love each other and be there for each other, for as long as we can."
"Don’t you get sick of this? The dying, I mean. Sometimes I wonder what it would be like to live in a place where people only die from things like cancer or falling off ski lifts."
"You could have gone to the States … she could have …"
"I don’t think he’s gone. I think we just couldn’t find him."
"We all have our limits here. All of us. The smarter ones go home when they reach it, the others wait too long."
"Those who stayed too often did, and yet those who left were never quite the same again either."
"The answers were no longer here for her, nor were the questions."
"There were ghosts around her everywhere as she packed her bags and put her books away."
"She was leaving them for a few friends. She was taking precious little with her, except for the memories, which no one could ever take away."
"He had been dead for a long time, and she was beginning to wonder if she had stayed, whether she would have wound up like Jean-Pierre, drunk, confused, aimless, bitter."
"Maybe no one. Maybe that was the conclusion to all this. That no one won. And no one ever would."
"She had to go home and make a life of it now."
"It was respectable and appropriate, and everything her mother would have wanted."
"Just being there, in the empty house, depressed her."
"She was a person with no home, no roots, and a questionable destination."