Norman Mailer, once respected as a prominent American intellectual, interviewed in the London Sunday Times Magazine, September 8, 2002:

Let's suppose 10 people are killed by a small bomb on a street corner in some city in America. The first thing to understand is that there are 280 [million] Americans. So there's one chance in 28 [million] you're going to be one of those people. By such heartless means of calculation, the 3,000 deaths in the twin towers came approximately to one mortality for every 90,000 Americans. Your chances of dying, if you drive a car are 1 in 7,000 each year. We seem perfectly willing to put up with automobile statistics.... There is a tolerable level to terror. Let's relieve ourselves of the idea that we have to remove all terror.

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