Laurence Gonzales

But what is the way forward? I know what it isn't. It's not, as we once believed, plenty to eat and a home with all the modern conveniences. It's not a 2,000-mile-long wall to keep Mexicans out or more accurate weapons to kill them. It's not a better low-fat meal or a faster computer speed. It's not a deodorant, a car, a soft drink, a skin cream. The way forward is found on a path through the wilderness of the head and heart---reason and emotion. Thinking, knowing, understanding.

To deal with reality you must first recognize it as such.

The plan, a memory of the future, tries on reality to see if it fits.

Everyone who dies out there dies of confusion.

Finally, I will never forget stopping near a lovely young girl still strapped to her seat, breathing slightly. Her blouse was white, her slacks were blue. At the end of the trousers were two snow-white ankle bones where her feet used to be. I had never seen the whiteness of bones that are freshly exposed like that.

As he walked along the runway, he came upon a United Airlines pilot. __e tried to sit up,_ Martz said. __ saw a huge triangular hole in his forehead and I told him to just lie still and that help was on the way, but it was too late for him.

Joan Wernick said she took two lessons from the crash. __ou__e going to die when you__e supposed to die.

He saw at least a dozen people still in their seats. Their clothes were torn or blown or burned from their bodies, __ompletely naked in front, missing limbs, missing faces, some breathing, some moaning, and others just deader than a door nail.

Survival is the celebration of choosing life over death. We know we're going to die. We all die. But survival is saying: perhaps not today. In that sense, survivors don't defeat death, they come to terms with it.

The word 'experienced' often refers to someone who's gotten away with doing the wrong thing more frequently than you have.