Laurence Gonzales Quotes

Survival is the celebration of choosing life over death. We know we're going to die. We all die. But survival is saying: perhaps not today. In that sense, survivors don't defeat death, they come to terms with it.

~ Laurence Gonzales

He saw at least a dozen people still in their seats. Their clothes were torn or blown or burned from their bodies, “completely naked in front, missing limbs, missing faces, some breathing, some moaning, and others just deader than a door nail.

~ Laurence Gonzales

Joan Wernick said she took two lessons from the crash. “You’re going to die when you’re supposed to die.

~ Laurence Gonzales

Finally, I will never forget stopping near a lovely young girl still strapped to her seat, breathing slightly. Her blouse was white, her slacks were blue. At the end of the trousers were two snow-white ankle bones where her feet used to be. I had never seen the whiteness of bones that are freshly exposed like that.

~ Laurence Gonzales

As he walked along the runway, he came upon a United Airlines pilot. “He tried to sit up,” Martz said. “I saw a huge triangular hole in his forehead and I told him to just lie still and that help was on the way, but it was too late for him.

~ Laurence Gonzales

Everyone who dies out there dies of confusion.

~ Laurence Gonzales

The plan, a memory of the future, tries on reality to see if it fits.

~ Laurence Gonzales

To deal with reality you must first recognize it as such.

~ Laurence Gonzales

But what is the way forward? I know what it isn't. It's not, as we once believed, plenty to eat and a home with all the modern conveniences. It's not a 2,000-mile-long wall to keep Mexicans out or more accurate weapons to kill them. It's not a better low-fat meal or a faster computer speed. It's not a deodorant, a car, a soft drink, a skin cream. The way forward is found on a path through the wilderness of the head and heart---reason and emotion. Thinking, knowing, understanding.

~ Laurence Gonzales

The word 'experienced' often refers to someone who's gotten away with doing the wrong thing more frequently than you have.

~ Laurence Gonzales