“I’ve gotten soup in the WTC mall in the winters when it’s cold.”

“And moments later, we heard another small popping sound. And the second tower crumbled to the ground.”

“They simply were no longer there.”

“Shock turned to grief and anger in the United States following the series of terrorist attacks Tuesday morning that destroyed four hijacked commercial airplanes, the 110-story twin towers of New York’s World Trade Center and collapsed part of the Pentagon.”

“Please pray for my friends. I’m crying because one of my good friends from college works at the MSDW office in WTC.”

There is soot falling out of the sky outside my apartment in Brooklyn.”

“He said there were burning bodies flying out of the sky.”

“Even if you had the technology to do so, how many minutes or seconds would you have between the time air traffic controllers realized something was wrong and the time you had to fire or risk downing the plane over the city?”

“It just so happens that today is An International Day of Peace, declared so by the UN.”

“We hear reports of ppl from the 50th floor escaping, there is hope. Hope. That’s all we have right now.”

“All we can think of here is films and television and cartoons. When have any of us seen anything like it in real life?”

“What do you feel when the heat of fire and the bruising of propelled debris is only separated from you by a picture tube?”

“When it rains, it pours.”

“I’m so scared right now. I don’t want to hear any reports of Americans grabbing the nearest Arab and beating the crap out of him or her. Don’t do it. Please.”

“The United States can hardly declare war on militant Islam without targeting or destabilizing countries with which it needs to remain on good terms.”

“You can’t protect yourself from this. You can’t build a building that will stand up to a plane crashing into it. America is vulnerable.”

“How do we now tell our children that the world is a safe place to be? How can I convince them of something that I no longer believe — at least not at this moment?” (lots of Diary-X quotes. Very much worth reading.)