People From Atlanta

"EEK EEK EEK!! That's dolphin for 'I'm sorry.' But you already knew that.."

"I gave her an unmistakable "I want to fuck you" look, she shot me back a quick "My spine hurts" face, and I was smitten."

"You see, I have fucked an amputee and a set of twins. If you add in a midget, you are looking at a legendary trifecta. How many other people can say they have done that? Seriously, raise your hand if you even know someone who has done that. Yeah, some of you have fucked midgets. Some of you have fucked amputees. Some have even fucked a set of twins. But how many can honestly say you have done all three categories? I'm not going to say that I'm the only guy on earth who has done this, but I would bet you could fit all of us into a Prius."

"Redheadedcalin doll: Doll comes with an innocent smile. Pull her string and doesn't speak, she just opens her legs."

"I try to make them understand it's not about getting pussy, it's about having fun. It's not about getting drunk, it's about being with your friends. It's not about dishing out put downs, it's about the thrill that comes with improving a witty line. It's not about being an asshole, it's about refusing to let others define your life. It's ultimately about being the person you want to be, and all the manic happiness that comes with that."

"I turned down $2 million for this script. There's absolutely no way that had I filmed the script through a major studio they would have done anything but fuck this movie up. They would have cut all the balls off the comedy, they would have put Seth Rogen and Dane Cook in it, they would have changed Tucker to make him fall in love, and all this stupid shit that would have driven me up a fucking wall."

"The biggest thing I learned was, especially the way I operate and how I am as a person, if I'm going to do a creative endeavor, I need to have full, complete control. Top to bottom. And with my book and website, I always had that. With the website, definitely, with the book, basically, with the movie...I didn't in a lot of ways. Nils and I, we had a lot of control, more control probably than almost any first time movie makers do within a normal studio system. We were in the middle between independent and not, because someone else paid for everything, and they kind of let us do what we wanted, but then once the movie was done creatively, it went in a direction that I did not want it to go, and there was nothing I could really do about it. It's hard enough to swim in that movie current by yourself, but when you've got weights tied to you and someone pulling you in a different direction, it's almost impossible. You need to pick a direction and go with it. If you're going to be a big studio movie, go be that, and if you're going to go be a rogue independent film, go be that. We had different people with different levels of authority on the movie that pulled us in different directions, and it just doesn't work. Either be in control or let someone else do it, but don't...too many chefs. I'm going to be better next time. Failure instructs, failure improves. Failure shouldn't deter you, unless you're just bad at it."

"I was standing in the most absolute aloneness that I had ever been given."

"When I went to college (from 1959 to 1963), there were no women's studies courses, no anthologies that stressed a female heritage, no public women's movement. Poetry meant Yeats, Lowell, James Dickey. Without even realizing it, I assumed that the voice of the poet had to be male."

"Those that are hunted Know this as their life, Their reward: to walk Under such trees in full knowledge Of what is in glory above them, And to feel no fear."

"These hunt, as they have done But with claws and teeth grown perfect, More deadly than they can believe."

"Here they are. The soft eyes open. If they have lived in a wood It is a wood. If they have lived on plains It is grass rolling Under their feet forever."

"She is watching her country lose its evoked master shape watching it lose And gain get back its houses and peoples watching it bring up Its local lights single homes lamps on barn roofs."

"With the plane nowhere and her body taking by the throat The undying cry of the void falling living beginning to be something That no one has ever been and lived through screaming without enough air."

"I have just come down from my father. Higher and higher he lies Above me in a blue light Shed by a tinted window."

"I saw for a blazing moment The great grassy world from both sides, Man and beast in the round of their need."

"It was something like love From another world that seized her From behind, and she gave, not lifting her head Out of dew, without ever looking, her best Self to that great need."

"Dust fanned in scraped puffs from the earth Between his arms, and blood turned his face inside out, To demonstrate its suppleness Of veins, as he perfected his role."

"Drunk on the wind in my mouth, Wringing the handlebar for speed, Wild to be wreckage forever."

"The river and everything I remembered about it became a possession to me, a personal, private possession, as nothing else in my life ever had. Now it ran nowhere but in my head, but there it ran as though immortally. I could feel it -- I can feel it -- on different places on my body.... In me it still is, and will be until I die, green, rocky, deep, fast, slow, and beautiful beyond reality."

"There was nothing in common, in the way he was lying, with any of the positions I had seen him in while he was alive, until I remembered the pose by the river in which I had most wanted to kill him. He now had that same relaxed, enjoying look of belonging anywhere he happened to be, and particularly in the woods."

"That’s all anybody has got. It depends on how strong your fantasy is, and whether you really — really — in your own mind, fit into your own fantasy, whether you measure up to what you’ve fantasized. I don’t know what yours is, but I’ll bet you don’t come up to it."

"Something or other was being made good. I touched the knife hilt at my side, and remembered that all men were once boys, and that boys are always looking for ways to become men. Some of the ways are easy, too; all you have to do is be satisfied that it has happened."

"I had the feeling that if it were perfectly quiet, if I could hear nothing, I would never wake up. Something in the world had to pull me back, for every night I went down deep, and if I had any sensation during sleep, it was of going deeper and deeper, trying to reach a point, a line or border."

"At times I get the feeling I can't wait. Life is so fucked-up now, and so complicated, that I wouldn't mind if it came down, right quick, to the bare survival of who was ready to survive. You might say I've got the survival craze, the real bug. And to tell you the truth I don't think most other people have. They might cry and tear their hair and be ready for some short hysterical violence or other, but I think most of them wouldn't be too happy to give down and get it over with.... If everything wasn't dead, you could make a kind of life that wasn't out of touch with everything, with other forms of life. Where the seasons would mean something, would mean everything. Where you could hunt as you needed to, and maybe do a little light farming, and get along. You'd die early, and you'd suffer, and your children would suffer, but you'd be in touch."

"I decided that survival was not in the rivets and the metal, and not in the double-sealed doors and not in the marbles of Chinese checkers. It was in me. It came down to the man, and what he could do. The body is the one thing you can't fake; it's just got to be there."

"What a view, I said again. The river was blank and mindless with beauty. It was the most glorious thing I have ever seen. But it was not seeing, really. For once it was not just seeing. It was beholding. I beheld the river in its icy pit of brightness, in its far-below sound and indifference, in its large coil and tiny points and flashes of the moon, in its long sinuous form, in its uncomprehending consequence."

"Nobody worth a damn could ever come from such a place. It was nothing, like most places and people are nothing."

"Thompson's friends had prepared a "Welcome Home" party for him at the Cajun Pier Restaurant, on the banks of the Bayou Vermillion in Lafayette. This would be the hero's welcome he never got when he returned from Vietnam some thirty years earlier. The party went on for a few hours, until it was obvious that the man of the hour was about to drop from fatigue. He needed to go home and go to bed. It was after midnight when he got home. His son, Steven, met him at the door. "Dad, you got a bunch of mail," Steven pointed out. There, on the coffee table, was a week's worth of mail. It was such a tall pile that some of the letters had fallen off the table and onto the floor. Thompson's eyes lit up. "Boy, that is a bunch. Who's all this from?" he asked, with energy returning to his voice. "People from all over the country. I think it's fan mail." "How did they get our address?" "Well, most of 'em don't have any real address, except Lafayette, Louisiana. Look at how some of them are addressed: 'Hero of My Lai' or "Soldier's Medal Recipient.'" All of a sudden, the weary traveler didn't feel fatigued at all. Maybe his trip to Vietnam did count for something. Maybe his whole involvement in Vietnam was worthwhile. It certainly appeared so, judging from the volume of mail that had accumulated in his absence. If Thompson ever had any doubt about the value of what he had done at My Lai, that doubt was about to leave him. If he had been burdened over the years by some sort of complex about being unappreciated, his burden was about to be lifted. He sat down on his sofa with a handful of letters and started reading."

"What a great man. There are so many people today walking around alive because of him, not only in Vietnam, but people who kept their units under control under other circumstances because they had heard his story. We may never know just how many lives he saved."

"I am a firm believer that all of us, children and adults alike, need heroes in order to call the best from us. The problem today is that so many of the heroes presented to youth are so questionable in what they invite people to emulate.... It would be refreshing to have someone like yourself talk to students at Loyola... about a different kind of heroism, one that necessarily bucks "peer pressure" when higher values are to be followed and when one's conscience is to be listened to... I am convinced that people are capable of great heroism, but they must first hear from people who have fought to the place of being considered heroic. I do not want all this talk of "hero" to frighten you away, Mr. Thompson. It is just a code word for what you did, which was essentially loving your neighbor in a profound way under difficult circumstances."

"You can't imagine what courage it took to do what he did."

"Reading about what you did at My Lai released imprisoned emotions that I didn't know I had locked away all these years. I guess My Lai had hurt and shamed me more than I knew. Your heroism in the face of that terrific evil has renewed my faith in mankind. I can't believe I'm writing this, because I am not at all emotional or morose or even deep-thinking, normally. But the description of what you did, and my spontaneous and voluntary reaction to it, has made me realize that I was deeply wounded by Vietnam, and My Lai in particular. I'll bet there are many more like me. You have healed many of my wounds. I could feel as if the emotions broke free the day I read your story. Thank you for that. Thank you also for showing all of us that man can perform moral and courageous deeds even if threatened by terrible and evil danger. You have given all of us an inspiring lesson in how to live."

"It is good that America remembers you now, because many times America forgets much too easily. It also sometimes forgets the good it has done. My personal wish is to thank you and all of the Americans who came to Vietnam to help the South Vietnamese people, not kill them. I would like to thank all U.S. soldiers who helped my mother and sister and relatives in our village because, according to my family, there were mostly good soldiers who came to our village. You took a big risk for humanity. You are a brave man and a good one."

"He was the guy who by his heroic actions gave a morality and dignity to the American military effort. At war sometimes things get topsy turvy, so he was a moral example at a time when things were pure evil."

"In yesterday's newspaper I read an account of the action you took at My Lai, protecting the Vietnamese villagers from American troops. I cried. I'm near tears again, writing this. I'm not a Vietnam veteran. I've never served in the Armed Forces, I've never been to Vietnam. But I am an American Jew who grew up in the wake of the Holocaust, studying history as an endless parade of massacres of the innocent... Usually the daily paper proves to me, over and over, that human beings would literally rather hurt each other than eat. I don't like feeling like this, but I think I always have. But every now and then. Every now and then. I collect these now-and-thens inside myself whenever and wherever I come across them. They may make me cry by day, but I cling to them at night, to keep myself warm remembering that- for all the horrors of history- human beings are capable of kindness, courage, love, self-sacrifice and passionate sympathy. It's terribly easy to forget that, and I usually do. You have reminded me."

"Calley was convicted, Nixon had made it easy on him, five hundred and four people were dead in Vietnam, it was a war crime, no one paid for it. Thompson was disgusted. The hero of My Lai had had enough. He was worn down by the tension of the courtroom, angered by the lack of justice, wounded by the mean looks and cold shoulders he was getting while out in public. Now, he just wanted to go home, back to his base at Ft. Rucker, Alabama. He just wanted to be left alone."

"Hugh Thompson, Larry Colburn and other men of goodwill- who cooperated in the Peers Inquiry and who testified repeatedly during the courts-martial and in the pre-trial hearings- had hoped to see justice done but ended up saddened and disillusioned at the outcome. A near-total sense of futility came over Thompson. He had gone to a lot of trouble for nearly no result, except for what he considered a token conviction. It would be a long, long time before he would go to that much trouble again for anyone or any cause."

"In the same months that Thompson was becoming increasingly sensitive to the disapproval of others, Lt. Calley was gaining the sympathy of more and more Americans, who held the viewpoint that he was a soldier who was just taking orders when he did what he did at My Lai. They saw Calley as a scapegoat for the transgressions of his superiors, a guy who was singled out to take the fall for the officers over him and the men around him on that day in March of 1968. Calley was, in the minds of many, a national hero."

"He was treated like a traitor for 30 years, so he was conditioned to just shut up and be quiet. Every bit of information I got from him, I had to drag it out of him."

"Thompson landed again. Glenn and I got out of the aircraft, took out the guns. Hugh walked over to this lieutenant [Brooks], and I could tell they were in a shouting match. I thought they were going to get in a fist fight. He told me later what they said. Thompson: 'Let's get these people out of this bunker and get 'em out of here.' Brooks: 'We'll get 'em out with hand grenades.' Thompson: 'I can do better than that. Keep your people in place. My guns are on you.' Hugh was outranked, so this was not good to do, but that's how committed he was to stopping it."

"You should be stripped of your stripes, you chicken-livered traitor, for the trouble you have caused our country and our military. What do you think war is? A game of ping-pong? That village was a threat to our own men. Would you rather see our men mowed down by the enemy? Your kind is our worst enemy, the rat commie within our country... You are a disgrace to the South (which is a producer of patriots), a disgrace to the nation... You are through in the service whether or not you get kicked out. If you were in the Marine Corps I don't think you would last very long. However, you will have to pay the full price of all traitors. For every man you have caused to be locked up and punished, you will walk in shame the rest of your days... May our country always be right (which is not easy when dealing with international communism). But our country right or wrong. If you don't believe that way, you are no American; you are no better than the fanatic communist animals who have trapped and killed all the U.S. military to date. You are worse than they, as you are supposed to be an American. I was proud of my town until (now). You have disgraced us all."

"They said I was screaming quite loud. I threatened never to fly again. I didn't want to be a part of that. It wasn't war."

"These people were looking at me for help and there was no way I could turn my back on them"

"I'd received death threats over the phone. Dead animals on your porch, mutilated animals on your porch some mornings when you get up. So I was not a 'good guy'."

"Something terrible happened here 30 years ago today. I cannot explain why it happened. I just wish our crew that day could have helped more people than we did."

"Don't do the right thing looking for a reward, because it might not come."

"I'm going to go over and get them out of the bunker myself. If the squad opens up on them, shoot 'em."

"The history of Western science confirms the aphorism that the great menace to progress is not ignorance but the illusion of knowledge."

"The cities of Italy are now deluged with droves of these creatures [tour groups], for they never separate, and you see them, forty in number, pouring along a street with their director — now in front, now at the rear, circling them like a sheep dog — and really the process is as like herding as may be."