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What was new was the symbolic force of the targets struck. The attackers did not just physically cause the highest buildings in Manhattan to collapse; they also destroyed an icon in the household imagery of the American nation.

It's very important to go back and keep in mind the distinction between handling these events as criminal acts, which was the way we did before 9/11, and then looking at 9/11 and saying, 'This is not a criminal act,' not when you destroy 16 acres of Manhattan, kill 3,000 Americans, blow a big hole in the Pentagon. That's an act of war.

Creative destruction is gonna be the greatest thing that can happen to Manhattan.

War is the science of destruction.

With those attacks, the terrorists and their supporters declared war on the United States. And war is what they got.

If we lose the war in the air we lose the war and we lose it quickly.

Dropping those atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki was a war crime.

We made air attacks on the Japanese anchorage, sinking and damaging several vessels. However, the Japanese were alerted to the fact that American carriers were nearby.

I'm a New York kid, so when I saw that plane that hit the first building, I suspected it was terrorism - blue sky day.

There's not really much destruction in New York besides the weather and it's a natural force so it's not like any destruction. But LA gets leveled (laughs). That's my comment to Hollywood.