Love Quote by Ted Olson

Grief, in Ted Olson's telling, is a public utility: you don't merely endure it, you "take strength" from it, draw it out of other people like current from a grid. The phrasing is bluntly instrumental, almost managerial, and that is the point. Olson is a lawyer-statesman type, trained to keep emotion legible, orderly, and socially acceptable. So he builds a sentence that turns devastation into a workflow: identify the sources of support (those who love you, those who love Barbara), name the volume ("huge number"), and validate the collective response ("sympathy and compassion and support") as something that can be converted into stamina.

The subtext sits in the quiet pivot from "people that love you" to "people that love Barbara". It's an acknowledgment that public grief doesn't just orbit the survivor; it belongs to the person who died, whose life generated bonds the spouse can't and shouldn't monopolize. By separating those constituencies, Olson also avoids the narcissistic trap of centering himself, a necessary move for someone speaking under attention and scrutiny.

Context matters: Olson was a prominent political and legal figure, and "Barbara" is Barbara Olson, his wife, who was killed on 9/11. In that aftermath, private sorrow was instantly nationalized. The line functions as both shield and bridge: a way to express genuine feeling without performing collapse, and a way to translate an overwhelming flood of condolences into something dignified, reciprocal, and bearable. Calling it "extremely moving" is restrained, but restraint here is not coldness; it's survival in public.