First Blood (Rambo: First Blood Series Book 1)

by David Morrell

Six months back from the war and still he had the urge to destroy what was left of what he had eaten so he would not leave a trace of where he had been.

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.

Always choose a route that won’t trap you. Never run where you might cut yourself off.

feeling for lush branches that might easily be broken off, always careful to take only one from each tree so that it would not be obvious he had gone through here gathering them.

never engage with an enemy until you know him as well as yourself.”

“I don’t kill for a living.” “Of course not. You tolerate a system that lets others do it for you. And when they come back from the war, you can’t stand the smell of death on them.”

There was a counter-rule: when somebody wants you to second-guess them, that’s when you don’t try. The best reaction is to go on as if you never heard it.

There was always something left to do, some flaw in any plan:

Just because he was living like an animal, he thought, didn’t mean he had to feel like one. That was from training school. Be clean whenever you can. It makes you go longer and fight better.

the final rule: if he was going to lose, if they were going to capture him, at least he could pick the place where it would happen,

The native allies in the war had called it the way of Zen, the journey to arrive at the pure and frozen moment, achieved only after long arduous training and concentration and determination to be perfect. A part of movement when movement itself ceased.

Having gone through that hell, maybe he had to find everything else full of pleasure.

What he should have done was cherish more smiling girls and drink more icy water and taste more summer melons.