Like most people, I can vividly recall exactly where I was when I heard the news. It was chemistry class, second period. I was a sixteen-year-old junior, wandering aimlessly through another school day, working halfheartedly on a lab assignment, trying to figure out the density of different liquids, when word filtered down to our classroom. Something about a terrible accident in New York City: a plane crashing into one of the Twin Towers. Suddenly every television set in the school was lit up, and every classroom had suspended normal teaching activities to focus on this tragedy half a continent away. At that point that morning, no one knew what had happened yet. The news commentators- like everyone else- were working under the assumption that the jet had gone wildly off course and experienced some sort of catastrophic failure, resulting in a collision with one of the towers. It wasn't until the second plane ht that the unfathomable became real: This wasn't an accident- it was a terrorist attack, intentional, willful, coordinated, and almost incomprehensibly lethal. To those of us watching, it was our first view of evil.

And just so — if I could, because he insulted a lot of people. I've had more calls on that statement that Ted made — New York is a great place. It's got great people, it's got loving people, wonderful people. When the World Trade Center came down, I saw something that no place on Earth could have handled more beautifully, more humanely than New York. You had two one hundred, you had two 110-story buildings come crashing down. I saw them come down. Thousands of people killed, and the cleanup started the next day, and it was the most horrific cleanup, probably in the history of doing this, and in construction. I was down there, and I've never seen anything like it. And the people in New York fought and fought and fought, and we saw more death, and even the smell of death — nobody understood it. And it was with us for months, the smell, the air. And we rebuilt downtown Manhattan, and everybody in the world watched and everybody in the world loved New York and loved New Yorkers. And I have to tell you, that was a very insulting statement that Ted made.

There were screams and yells from the street below as people saw what was happening. There would be lots of phone-camera footage on the news that night from people with more media-savvy than brains.

I remember... we heard the engines and we heard the screams and rushed out and rushed over... We could see this building from Washington Square and the people had just begun to jump when we got there. They had been holding... standing in the windowsills... crowded by others behind them, the fire pressing closer and closer, the smoke closer and closer. Finally the men were trying to get out this... net to catch people... they couldn't wait any longer. They began to jump. The window was too crowded and they would jump and they hit the sidewalk. The net broke, they [fell] a terrible distance, the weight of the bodies was so great... that they broke through the net. Every one of them was killed, everybody who jumped... It was a horrifying spectacle. We... felt as though we had been part of it all. The next day people... in all parts of the city... began to mull around and gather and talk.

We had notification since the previous Thursday that the event would take place that day. We had finished our work that day and had the radio on. It was 5:30 PM our time. I was sitting with Dr. Ahmad Abu al-Khair. Immediately, we heard the news that a plane had hit the World Trade Center.

When I watched the murderous attacks on New York and Washington, my first reactions were of incredulity horror and sympathy for the victims and their families But when I came to write my weekly editorial for The New Statesman the following day (knowing that most readers would not see it until that Friday), I thought I should raise wider issues. I suggested that billions of poor people throughout the world would support the attacks because they blamed America for their plight and saw no alternative but to strike out in rage.

And again, the empty space that was, I now saw and admitted, the obvious: the ruins of the World Trade Center. The place had become a metonym of its disaster.

When the wind blew from the south and the French doors had been opened, the sound of cheering carried from Ebbets Field into the apartment. It was astonishing, to hear cheers from a major league crowd while sitting at home.

When I watched the Twin Towers fall, I said aloud to my naked friend, “There go our civil liberties.” A few months later I called George Carlin and we were chatting about America’s reaction to the attack. I told him my thoughts. He excused himself, put down the phone, and went and got his journal. As the Twin Towers fell, he had written, “There go our civil rights.” I was so proud to have had a similar thought at a similar time to a genius. We were sad to be right. To react to an attack on our freedom with less freedom seems so deeply un-American. What ever happened to Yankee Doodle Dandy and “fuck you in the fucking neck”?

[J]ust being on the bridge when that storm came along... and watching those waves roll towards the ship and... rear up in front of us. It wasn't everyone's favorite thing, but I felt privileged to be there.

Thank you all. I want you all to know; it can't go any louder. I want you all to know that America today, America today is on bended knee. In prayer for people whose lives were lost here, for the workers who work here. for the families who mourn. This nation stands with the good people of New York City and New Jersey and Connecticut as we mourn the loss of thousands of our citizens.

I was a senior in high school. I was in class and we turned on the TV after the first plane hit. [...] That was the defining moment. Once the towers fell on 9/11, that’s when I decided I was going to join the military and I was going to serve with the 75th Ranger Regiment.

The band played marching from deck to deck, and as the ship went under I could still hear the music.

The truth of the matter is — and I'm always a bit reluctant to say this because people think you're a bit unfeeling. The truth of this, on 9/11, people who — myself and others — were so unbelievably focused on what was happening that we were, for many, many hours, I think, spared the agony of loss.