Anyone who has seriously attempted it knows the impossibility of representing past events authentically, as they were lived and felt by the people involved. …. People then just didn’t think the way we do.

I’m not cut out to be a pundit — I don’t trust my own instant opinions. But I had to say something. I think what I said was that the aggression of Sept. 11 had been so extreme, that it called for an extreme response, and I was not prepared to condemn the attacks [bombing of Afghanistan] without knowing a lot more about them. (2001.10.07)