The whole memorial is for different senses ... seeing, hearing, feeling, smelling. I probably would have come up with something different if I had not lived through it.

Seeing, hearing and feeling are miracles, and each part and tag of me is a miracle.

One of the things I thought a lot about was how can we get the views, for instance, the main plaza, you look up to Telegraph Hill from there and therefore it would be a disaster to close that view off.

The war, as I felt it and a lot of my compatriots felt it, was a creative act.

Let me just say something that I forgot, I also hoped and this was very true in the beginning - that this would also be a place that people would be able to walk in to the fountain and use it in a nice way of reading and examining the quotations on the blocks.

I suppose and I hope that the young guys who are out there losing their lives at least feel the same way I did. I shouldn't think about this very much because I'm almost weeping when I think about it.