Quotes from First Blood

David Morrell ·  320 pages

Rating: (5.2K votes)


“His name was Rambo, and he was just some nothing kid for all anybody knew, standing by the pump of a gas station at the outskirts of Madison, Kentucky.”
― David Morrell, quote from First Blood


“Just because somebody smiles when he hands me a bag of shit, that doesn't mean I have to take it. I don't give a damn how friendly he is. It's what he does that matters.”
― David Morrell, quote from First Blood


“What about God? The idea embarrassed him. It was only in moments of absolute fear that he had ever thought about God and prayed to him, always embarrassed because he did not believe and felt so hypocritical when he prayed out of fear, as if in spite of his disbelief there might be God after all, God who could be fooled by a hypocrite. When he was a child, then he believed. He certainly did believe when he was a child. How did it go, the nightly Act of Contrition? The words came hesitantly, unfamiliarly to him. Oh my God, I am heartily sorry for—For what?”
― David Morrell, quote from First Blood


“If he had really wanted to control himself, he could have. He simply had not wanted to control himself. To live his way, he had been determined to fight anyone who interfered. So all right then, in a way he had fought for a principle. But it was not that simple, because he had also been proud and delighted to show how good he was at fighting.”
― David Morrell, quote from First Blood


“Except that it was no more home, just the place where he had grown up, and that first day back, touring the once familiar places only made him realize that he had already lived close to half his life.”
― David Morrell, quote from First Blood



“I suppose none of what I'm saying matters. In a few years a search like this won't even be necessary. We have instruments now that can be mounted on the underside of an airplane. To find a man all you have to do is fly over the spot where you think he is, and the machine will register his body heat. Right now there aren't enough of those machines to go around. Most of them are in the war. But when we come home from there, well, a man on the run won't have hope. And a man like me, he won't be needed. This is the last of something. It's too bad. As much as I hate war, I fear the day when machines take the place of men. At least now a man can still get along on his talents.”
― David Morrell, quote from First Blood


About the author

David Morrell
Born place: in Kitchener, Ontario, Canada
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Popular quotes

“Her experience had been of a kind to teach her, rightly or wrongly, that the doubtful honor of a brief transit through a sorry world hardly called for effusiveness, even when the path was suddenly irradiated at some half-way point by daybeams rich as hers. But her strong sense that neither she nor any human being deserved less than was given, did not blind her to the fact that there were others receiving less who had deserved much more. And in being forced to class herself among the fortunate she did not cease to wonder at the persistence of the unforeseen, when the one to whom such unbroken tranquility had been accorded in the adult stage was she whose youth had seemed to teach that happiness was but the occasional episode in a general drama of pain.”
― Thomas Hardy, quote from The Mayor of Casterbridge


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― Hans Christian Andersen, quote from The Complete Fairy Tales


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