Barbara

“Two-year-old Christine Hanson and four-year-old Juliana McCourt would never visit Disneyland. Neither they nor David Gamboa-Brandhorst would know first days of school, first loves, or any other milestone, from triumph to heartbreak, of a full life. Andrea LeBlanc would never again travel the world with her gregarious, pacifist husband, Bob. Julie Sweeney wouldn’t bear children, grow old, and feel safe with her confident warrior husband, Brian. Delayed passengers wouldn’t hear recitals of Forrest Gump dialogue from Captain Victor Saracini. First Officer Michael Horrocks’s daughter wouldn’t rise from bed with the promise that her daddy loved her to the moon. Ace Bailey and Mark Bavis would never again share their gifts with young hockey players or with their own families. Retired nurse Touri Bolourchi, who’d fled Iran and the Ayatollah Khomeini, wouldn’t see her grandsons grow up as Americans.”
― Mitchell Zuckoff, Fall and Rise: The Story of 9/11

“Only through love can we drive away the darkness of evil from this earth.”
― Nguyễn Phan Quế Mai, The Mountains Sing

“What my uncle said made me think. I had resented America, too. But by reading their books, I saw the other side of them--their humanity. Somehow I was sure that if people were willing to read each other, and see the light of other cultures, there would be no war on earth.”
― Nguyễn Phan Quế Mai, The Mountains Sing

“But it didn’t matter how long or short we lived. It mattered more how much light we were able to shed on those we loved and how many people we touched with our compassion.”
― Nguyễn Phan Quế Mai, The Mountains Sing