Kevin Powers Quotes

And the Blue Angels are coming back to scare the local population. I remember seeing old Vietnamese women ducking under the benches in Washington Square; they thought they were back in the war.

I returned to Vietnam in '94, and even then, all those decades later, walking around that place, I remained afraid. And, in some ways, rightly so.

My dad would take me deer hunting with him, which was pretty traumatic - 'Bambi' was one of my favorite movies.

I grew up with brothers. Girls terrified me.

The whole memorial is for different senses... seeing, hearing, feeling, smelling. I probably would have come up with something different if I had not lived through it.

The first several years of my life were used to upload incredible amounts of fear, and I just became afraid of everything. I was afraid of my parents, afraid of my classmates, afraid of the streets of Washington, D.C. I would flinch at every gesture.

There are occasions when I've pretended to be in a firefight, and then there are people who have really been in a firefight. Clearly it's absolutely ridiculous, and even disrespectful, to suggest that I understand what that is.

In February 1969, 25 years ago, I arrived as a young, terrified PFC on this lonely little hill in Quang Ngai Province. Back then, the place seemed huge and imposing and permanent.

Obviously all of us have thought about Vietnam, particularly in my generation in Australia that were part of conscription and fought there. Our friends came back, forever changed. So there were a lot of questions.

But when I came back into the city for the first time last November, I thought every truck, every building was going to blow up. It has truly changed me something fierce.

He who has been stung by a serpent is afraid of a lizard.

Vietnam was my nightmare for a good ten years.

I grew up knowing only war, so for me, it was the way things were. It wasn't pleasant by any means.

Being in combat is not unending high-five moments.

He that has been bitten by a snake is afraid of a rope.

I've never been to war, and I would never presume to fully understand the horrors that that kind of experience can impart.

I have a store full of thousands and thousands of images in my brain. I've got this terrible feeling I'm like some abattoir boss: I know death; I know the cut pieces of the human body.

Growing up, when I'd throw out the trash, I'd toss it and dart because all the cats would come running. That's why I still don't like cats.

It was on a trip to Africa with my family - I was eight - and an angry baboon jumped through the window of our parked car. As my siblings escaped, my foot got stuck in the seat. I froze and watched it steal the whole contents of our car around me.

Once you've had a panic attack you live in fear that another one is going to come. From the second it's gone, every moment every day is about the next one.

I saw 'The Shining' in eighth grade. I watched it on VHS at a sleepover and was petrified, totally petrified. And I didn't really start to digest the movie properly and understand it from a filmmaking perspective until I got older. But it pretty much defined what it meant to be scared of a movie for me.

The Wicked Witch of the West really scared me as a child.

I was scarred in 1977 by watching Jaws, and I've never got over it.

Yeah, my parents exposed me to horror movies when I was like 6 or 7. I mean exposed me in a good way, they didn't mean any harm.

Having been raised during the war, I know very well how childhood hampered by displacement, poverty, violence, and fear looks like.