"We did exactly what everybody in the country did, watching it. You entered this state of sort of denials. You think, well, it must have been a tragic accident by an amateur pilot. And then you see the next plane coming"
About this Quote
Her phrasing performs the mind’s self-protection in real time. "You entered this state of sort of denials" is clumsy on purpose - the grammar stutters the way cognition does when it can’t file what it’s seeing. The pivot to "You think, well..". is even more revealing: she’s narrating an internal script we all reach for, the default story that keeps the world legible. A "tragic accident" and an "amateur pilot" are comforting frames because they preserve the premise that systems basically work and disasters are isolated mistakes.
Then comes the gut-punch of craft: "And then you see the next plane coming". Present tense turns memory into replay, forcing the listener back into that terrible second when interpretation collapses. "Coming" is the key word - motion, intention, inevitability. In one beat, the quote tracks the cultural shift from accident to attack, from confusion to comprehension, from spectatorship to participation. The subtext is about how quickly denial can be replaced by certainty, and how the camera made that conversion unavoidable.
Quote Details
| Topic | Fear |
|---|---|
| Source | Help us find the source |
| Cite |
Citation Formats
APA Style (7th ed.)
Sawyer, Diane. (2026, January 17). We did exactly what everybody in the country did, watching it. You entered this state of sort of denials. You think, well, it must have been a tragic accident by an amateur pilot. And then you see the next plane coming. FixQuotes. https://fixquotes.com/quotes/we-did-exactly-what-everybody-in-the-country-did-44231/
Chicago Style
Sawyer, Diane. "We did exactly what everybody in the country did, watching it. You entered this state of sort of denials. You think, well, it must have been a tragic accident by an amateur pilot. And then you see the next plane coming." FixQuotes. January 17, 2026. https://fixquotes.com/quotes/we-did-exactly-what-everybody-in-the-country-did-44231/.
MLA Style (9th ed.)
"We did exactly what everybody in the country did, watching it. You entered this state of sort of denials. You think, well, it must have been a tragic accident by an amateur pilot. And then you see the next plane coming." FixQuotes, 17 Jan. 2026, https://fixquotes.com/quotes/we-did-exactly-what-everybody-in-the-country-did-44231/. Accessed 20 Feb. 2026.




