"And next to me stood Harry Ramos it was eight forty eight when our building leaned."
This may seem like a minor occurrence in the scene but this quote holds a lot of gravity and weight behind it. It takes place when John Paul DeVito is describing how one of the buildings he was in was rocked by the plane. The first part of this quote is critical. By describing how he was next to a colleague and it was 8:48 am, this quote sets up the apparent normality of the scene. It helps strengthen the concept in the audience's mind that September 11th was simply a normal day and people had begun work at their jobs. The second part of the quote then sets up the contrast that is crucial to the development of the play. His building began to lean, something that is far from normal. Not only does this demonstrate the danger he is in, it acts as a setup of the entire day, which started normal before turning tragic.
"On the seventy-eighth floor I saw a woman whose hair and clothes were on fire."
This quote is quite important because it effectively displays to the audience the sheer chaos of what is taking place. On September 11th, four different planes were hijacked and three of them were flown into massive public buildings, spreading terror and fear through the American public the likes of which had never been seen before. The government was caught off guard as well, which only added to the chaos and confusion of the terror attack. In this quote, we can clearly the discern what this day was like, as a woman who was simply working in a building on the 78th floor, was now burning to death. This would be a startling sight and a chaotic one as well.
"And we ended up in the street after eighteen minutes."
Once again, Dorene's quote holds significance in this play. She said this line when they were describing taking the burning woman out of the building in order to receive medical aid and comfort. First off, the importance can be found in the sentence as a whole. People were rushing to the streets in an attempt to flee the catastrophic damage that was taking place due to the terrorist attacks. While working at the office it is not typical to see people flooding onto the streets, which augments the tone of the scene to demonstrate how atypical this day was. Additionally, the significance of this quote can be used in the syntax and how Dorene says they "ended up" in the streets. Not that they traveled to the streets, or walked to the streets, or even ran to the streets. The fact that she uses the phrasing ended up is indicative of how her circumstances forced her to do things that were completely out of the ordinary.
