9/11 forced us to build another identity, to look deep and say who are we, and what do we believe and is killing in the name of Islam part of that religion? No. No. No.

— Ruth Ahmed

After September 11th, I never much liked the trend of everyone and his brother wearing the hats and jackets of the NYPD and FD NY. Only the people who do the job should get to wear the hat. Would you wear someone else's Medal of Honor? Yes, it's a tribute, and sincere tribute is always appropriate for these brave people. But wearing their symbols is also rubbing off a piece of heroism that isn't yours.

— Bill Maher

Ahead in the distance we could see the main gate, but there was a sea of cars, none moving, people standing, milling around, waiting nervously, perhaps fearfully, as heavily armed MPs and military working dogs searched every square inch of every vehicle, searched every bag on every person, all the while keeping a vigilant eye on the long alley we were stuck in, and on the hundreds of rooftops that overlooked that alley, wary but aware that there were people out there who would gladly hurt us again if given the chance.

— Tucker Elliot

All my life my dad felt this need to protect his kids from a war he fought, a war I believed could never reach out and touch us, could never hurt us—and yet he fed us lies with his answers, shielding us from the truth about what he did there, about what he saw, about who he was before the war, and about what he became because of it. He lied to protect us from his memories, from his nightmares. Standing with my dad at The Wall, I knew the truth—no one could know so many names engraved in granite if he 'never was in danger.

— Tucker Elliot

Always Sami. I was tethered to her somehow. To that scared little girl I’d found on the staircase nearly a year earlier; to the past, when teaching was simpler, and I could care about everyday problems, when being relentless meant running two extra laps, not waiting for an MP to search the undercarriage of a bus for bombs before letting students approach it.

— Tucker Elliot

A more fundamental questions suggests itself, however. How did the most powerful military in history come to devote its elite forces and advanced technology to the hunt for a man like Mari Mujib, a midlevel Taliban figure in a remote corner of the planet, half a world away from the White House and ground zero in Manhattan, more than eleven years after the September 11 attacks?

— ryan devereaux

And then, on September 11, the world fractured. It's beyond my skill as a writer to capture that day and the days that would follow--the planes, like specters, vanishing into steel and glass; the slow-motion cascade of the towers crumbling into themselves; the ash-covered figures wandering the streets; the anguish and the fear. Nor do I pretend to understand the stark nihilism that drove the terrorists that day and that drives their brethren still. My powers of empathy, my ability to reach into another's heart, cannot penetrate the blank stares of those would murder innocents with abstract, serene satisfaction.

— Barack Obama

Aren't 3,000 lives worth a miracle to a good and all-powerful god?

— Zack Love

As if somehow irony,” she recaps for Maxine, “as practiced by a giggling mincing fifth column, actually brought on the events of 11 September, by keeping the country insufficiently serious — weakening its grip on ‘reality.’ So all kinds of make-believe—forget the delusional state the country’s in already—must suffer as well. Everything has to be literal now.”“Yeah, the kids are even getting it at school.” Ms. Cheung, an English teacher who is Kugelblitz were a town would be the neighborhood scold, has announced that there shall be no more fictional reading assignments. Otis is terrified, Ziggy less so. Maxine will walk in on them watching Rugrats or reruns of Rock’s Modern Life, and they holler by reflex, “Don’t tell Ms. Cheung!”“You notice,” Heidi continues, “how ‘reality’ programming is suddenly all over the cable, like dog shit? Of course, it’s so producers shouldn’t have to pay real actors scale. But wait! There’s more! Somebody needs this nation of starers believing their all wised up at last, hardened and hip to the human condition, freed from the fictions that led them so astray, as if paying attention to made-up lives was some form of evil drug abuse that the collapse of the towers cured by scaring everybody straight again.

— Thomas Pynchon

As long as you know 'to let' means to rent and not a place to pee, you’re all set to travel in the UK. The lifts and the boots and everything else don’t really matter.

— Tucker Elliot