The just response to this terrible event should be to go immediately to the world community, the United Nations. The rule of international law should be marshaled, but it's probably too late because the United States has never done that; it's always gone it alone.
The occurrence of an event is not the same thing as knowing what it is that one has lived through. Most people had not lived -- nor could it, for that matter, be said that they had died-- through any of their terrible events. They had simply been stunned by the hammer. They passed their lives thereafter in a kind of limbo of denied and unexamined pain. The great question that faced him this morning was whether or not had had ever, really, been present at his life.
Often, my central challenge is figuring out how do I build trust, how do I acquaint people who've just endured some terrible event - losing their child to murder, say, or being sexually assaulted - with the bizarre and sometimes invasive nature of in-depth interviews that aren't just a quick list of ten questions?
I just sat there looking at television, sort of dumb and thought how horrible it was. I had -- the grand aspects of it did not occur to me -- I had no notion of this terrorist network that existed. I knew the were a lot of people in the world who didn't like us, but I had no idea that it was as well organized as it apparently is. That's one of the amazing facets of this terrible event: how well they did it. Incredible. The competence of these evil people.
I’d relived enough terrible events happening to cautious people to know that prudence wasn’t a guarantee for happiness.
The anniversary of Hiroshima, should be a day of somber reflection, not only on the terrible events of that day in 1945, but also on what they revealed: that humans, in their dedicated quest to extend their capacities for destruction, had finally found a way to approach the ultimate limit.
Looking back, I could not point to one special time and say, There! That's what is amazing. We can change completely and not recognize it. We think terrible events have made us into stone. But love slips in like a chisel - and suddenly it is an ax, breaking us into pieces from the inside.
After the terrible events of last week, there is still the shock and disbelief; there is anger; there is fear; but there is also, throughout the world, a profound sense of solidarity; there is courage; there is a surging of the human spirit.
The just response to this terrible event [911] should be to go immediately to the world community, the United Nations. The rule of international law should be marshaled, but it's probably too late because the United States has never done that; it's always gone it alone.
Today, I join King Abdullah in Paris to stand in solidarity with the people of France in their darkest hour. . . To stand in unity against extremism in all its forms and to stand up for our cherished faith, Islam. And so that the lasting image of these terrible events is an unprecedented outpouring of sympathy and support between people of all faiths and cultures.
At the back of my mind I had a sense of us sitting about waiting for some terrible event, and then I would remember that it had already happened.
All strange and terrible events are welcome, but comforts we despise.
