Quotables

“Why did my friend get blown up? For what?”

Former U.S. Army Ranger TOM AMENTA, who served in Afghanistan in 2002 and whose friend, Army Ranger Jay A. Blessing, was killed there by an improvised explosive in 2003. Amenta told The Washington Post the U.S. withdrawal “makes me angry, really angry.”

“All of my thoughts and behavior should not be determined by the so-called red lines under the national security law. I should be led by the teachings in the Bible.”

KIWI CHOW, a Hong Kong filmmaker who secretly shot a documentary on the city’s 2019 pro-democracy protests, telling Hong Kong Free Press why he planned to remain in Hong Kong despite potential prosecution for his film. Revolution of Our Times premiered at the Cannes Film Festival this summer.

“We came about a foot from drowning. I thought we were gone.”

Middle Tennessee resident RICKEY LARKIN, who told a New York Times reporter he was trapped by rising water in his home with his wife and cat as flash flooding hit communities in rural Humphreys County. Rescuers eventually reached Larkin and his wife, but 22 others died in the floods.

“As you can imagine, our staff are gutted and appalled by this.”

VINNY GREEN, chief operating officer of Snopes, on news that the fact-checking website’s co-founder David Mikkelson had plagiarized dozens of stories he’d written for the site from 2015 to 2019, according to The New York Times.

“It is as if we are cursed.”

The Rev. LUCSON SIMEON, a minister in Haiti, on the string of disasters the country has faced in recent years, culminating in a 7.2 magnitude earthquake in mid-August that killed more than 2,200 people and left thousands homeless. The earthquake was followed two days later by a major storm. Simeon told a Washington Post reporter, “We just keep getting beaten down. I ask myself, how can this be?”