What They Said: April 2026

“The Iranians have achieved mutual assured destruction without a nuclear weapon,” said Robert S. Litwak, a scholar at George Washington University who has written extensively on Iran’s nuclear program. “If Trump attacks Iran’s civil infrastructure, Iran will destroy the comparable energy and desalination facilities in the Gulf.” (New York Times, 04.01.26)

“We have this obsession with gas prices because they dictate a lot of ‘Can we drive? Can we do things we enjoy?’ And now some of that is at risk,” said Patrick De Haan, an analyst at GasBuddy, which also tracks fuel prices. (New York Times, 04.01.26)

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“At this point, I kind of want to hire people because I’m lonely,” said Matthew Gallagher who used AI to build and operate a $1.8 billion telehealth company marketing GLP-1 and erectile dysfunction drugs with his brother as his only employee.  (New York Times, 04.05.26)

“I only use it like for 10 minutes when I’m bored,” said Quentin, whose interactions with AI chatbots have declined since he began dating another teenager. “Even though I could torture people in that universe and beat up a kid named Oliver, because I hate that name, I’d rather be in my life.” (New York Times, 04.05.26)

“One principle of collage, for me,” said Lucy Sante, a visual historian and the author of Low Life, an account of tenement life in lower Manhattan during the Gilded Age, “is you have to kill one thing to make another. It’s a small-scale model of revolutionary behavior.”  (New York Times, 04.05.26)

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“It’s something so clearly unlawful and deeply misguided,” said Oona A. Hathaway, a Yale law professor who co-wrote an open letter signed by 100 legal experts and lawyers expressing their concerns about the U.S. strikes on Iran. “It’s hard to fathom how much the rules have been completely thrown out.” (New York Times, 04.06.26)

“Let those who have weapons lay them down. Let those who have the power to unleash wars choose peace,” Pope Leo XIV said in his first Easter message. “Not a peace imposed by force, but through dialogue. Not with the desire to dominate others, but to encounter them.” (New York Times, 04.06.26)

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“One wonders,” wrote Ronald H. Spector, a Viet Nam veteran turned academic historian, in 2017 in Politico, “how anyone could have believed that a complex and intractable war that began 14 years before President Kennedy came into office and continued for six years after Johnson left it could have been won or lost by presidential decisions in Washington during the four years between 1961 and 1965." (New York Times, 04.08.26)

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“Listen, I may not be part of the solution here[a world of doomscrolling, political chaos and uncertainty about AI]  in any fundamental way,” said Patrick Radden Keefe, author of Say Nothing, a humanistic account of "the Troubles" in Ireland and a staff writer for The New Yorker. “But I’m not part of the problem. And that’s something.” (New York Times, 04.09.26)

“The feature of these negotiations that may extend the cease-fire is that there is a bit of mutually assured destruction between the U.S. and Iran right now,” said Suzanne Maloney, an Iran expert and the vice president of the foreign policy program at the Brookings Institution. (New York Times, 04.09.26)

"We call it the manosphere, but it could more accurately be described as the boyosphere," observed Louis Theroux, director of Inside the Manosphere, a documentary. (New York Times, 04.09.26)

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“We made cameras that threw treats for pets. and now we make cameras that throw explosives at occupiers,” said Ukrainian drone manufacturer Yaroslav Azhnyuk.  (New York Times, 04.09.26)

“Two months ago the global news story was Tehran massacring its own people,” said Karim Sadjadpour, an Iran analyst at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. “Today the global news story is Tehran successfully resisting America and Israel.” (New York Times, 04.09.26)

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"I’ve also spent a long time with the song “Memory,” writes Betty Buckley, the Tony Award-winning actress and singer who originated the role of Grizabella in the Broadway production of “Cats. "I sang it at the Tony Awards in 1983, and I sang it at The Saint, a gay club in the East Village. At the song’s core is a simple plea of longing to be seen again — to be recognized and to be welcomed back into the circle.  (New York Times, 04.11.26)

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“They could hold their ground for another two months, if not more. And economically, I think there is no threshold for how much more pain the Iranians are willing to tolerate,” said Ali Vaez, the head of the Iran program at the International Crisis Group, a think tank.  (New York Times, 04.12.26)

“There’s one new thing I know, and that is: Planet Earth, you are a crew,” said NASA astronaut Christina Koch at a press conference celebrating the success of the Artemis II expedition. (New York Times, 04.12.26)

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“Look at what [Mark Carney, Canadian Prime Minister] has been able to do; ‘remarkable’ is just not the correct word,” said Shachi Kurl, president at the Angus Reid Institute, a nonpartisan political research group. “He took a party that was a bus with no brakes headed for a brick wall and somehow managed to not only pull it from the brink of oblivion, but then within a year, get it into a majority position.” (New York Times, 04.15.26)

"I can talk to actors who are 20, 30 years younger than me who have never heard of Laurence Olivier or Noël Coward or John Gielgud or Peggy Ashcroft or these giants of my youth: Gone. Particularly theater actors, over and done with. That’s fine," said Ian McKellen. "And I don’t have children. That’s most people’s legacy, isn’t it? No. I don’t think there’s any life after death in both senses of heaven and hell and a legacy. It’s over. So you better enjoy it while you’re here." (New York Times, 04.15.26)

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“When needed, try to be there — it’s as simple as that,” said Mary Kay Finneran, one of the last members of the Sisters of Charity, a Catholic order that has voted to close after serving New York City since 1869. “That’s how we all were as younger women. It is how I try to be now.” (New York Times, 04.17.26)

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“They [Germany's far right party, AfD, in the wake of Viktor Orban's defeat in Hungary] will latch on to whatever narrative is convenient,” said Constanze Stelzenmüller, director of the Center on the United States and Europe at the Brookings Institution in Washington. “If they have to, they will latch on to the idea of being the last of the Mohicans.” (New York Times, 04.18.26)

“Netanyahu influenced how the war started,” said Aaron David Miller, a former Middle East negotiator now at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. “He won’t influence how it ends.” (New York Times, 04.18.26)

“We believe there’s a sweet spot where we can meet our investment goals and help a project through that might otherwise not get built,” said NYC Comptroller Mark Levine, who announced a $4 billion pension fund investment in affordable housing. (New York Times, 04.18.26)

“It is a bit weird to see my professors in the audience at readings, knowing that they still need to grade my papers,” said Nelio Bidermann, the 22-year-old author of a bestselling German novel that has drawn comparisons to Buddenbrooks by Nobel Prize winner Thomas Mann. “But I imagine they can still do that without being biased.” (New York Times, 04.18.26)

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“I think the vast majority of Americans recognize that there is a large group of undocumented immigrants who have been literally keeping food on our tables,” said Kelsey Erickson Streufert, the chief public affairs officer for the Texas Restaurant Association. “And if we remove those people, it is going to hurt everyone in terms of higher prices.”  (New York Times, 04.19.26)

“My grandma would collect cans out the trash can for money," recalled Hykeem Jamaal Carter, Jr. who performs as Baby Keem.  "We’d walk home, sell cans. You kind of get the why. You don’t have to ask why. You’re living the why.” (New York Times, 04.19.26)

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“Leo wasn’t looking for a fight,” said Christopher White, a senior fellow at the Georgetown Initiative on Catholic Social Thought and Public Life. “One of the reasons he found his voice is out of necessity.”  (New York Times, 04.20.26)

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“Ever since the Trump Administration took office, something crazy like this seems to happen every single day,” said Bianca Marino whose travel plans were suddenly interrupted by the February closure of the El Paso International Airport, “so I just assumed it’s just another part of their incompetence and chaotic management going on.” (New York Times, 04.22.26)

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“Sometimes controversy makes artists more visible,” said Larry Miller, the executive director of the Sony Audio Institute for Music Business and Technology at New York University. “And in the streaming era this translates directly into listening.” (New York Times, 04.26.26)

“There have been wonderful queer people elected from the district over the last 30-some years,” said Cynthia Nixon, the actress and activist, who supports a heterosexual woman for a New York City Council seat in a district that has elected gay representatives since 1991. “But I feel now and have always felt we should be voting for people not based on their identity, but based on who they are.” (New York Times, 04.26.26)

“We are so broken emotionally when it comes to our politics that we’ve literally created this story that it’s inherent in being a competent political leader to kill civilians,” observed Graham Platner, a veteran of the wars in Iraq and Iran, and Maine Democratic candidate for Senate. “If you’re not willing to do some hard things and drop some bombs, then you’re not up to the task of power. I think it’s the opposite. You’re not up to the task of being in power if you do not think about the cost of violence. If that’s not at the front of your mind, then I don’t think you are morally in the right place to be in positions of power.” (New York Times, 04.26.26)

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“I always look for exits every time I’m in a room,” said Representative Jared Moskowitz, a Democrat from Florida and a target of an assassination plot in October 2024. “We can do a lot of stuff, we can mitigate it. But if someone really wants to try to cause harm, it’s almost impossible to prevent it.” (New York Times, 04.28.26)

“I saw this gorgeous photo on social media, and I was like, ‘How can I get myself here as fast as possible’?” said Julia Morrow, 26, an Ohio retail worker visiting Fujiyoshida during the peak of Japan's cherry blossom season. “If you don’t get that photo, it’s like, what’s the point of the trip?” (New York Times, 04.28.26)

“When you look at the Democrats, they actually look like America,” said Kevin McCarthy, the former House Republican leader shortly after leaving Congress in 2023. “When I look at my party, we look like the most restrictive country club in America.” (New York Times, 04.28.26)

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“A.I. is less regulated in America than sandwiches,” said Max Tegmark, a physics professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology who is also a co-founder of the Future of Life Institute, a nonprofit trying to reduce catastrophic technology risks. “You can’t open a sandwich shop without having your kitchen inspected. But you can release an A.I. girlfriend for 11-year-olds and that’s fine.” (New York Times, 04.29.26)

“The internet restrictions [in Russia] have turned a large number of people against the ruling class, if not against Vladimir Putin personally,” said Mikhail Komin, a political scientist at the Center for European Policy Analysis. “That’s why we’re seeing approval ratings drop and people who never spoke out on political issues suddenly getting political.” (New York Times, 04.29.26)

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"I don’t have any problem with Trump being a Republican," said CBS Late Night host Stephen Colbert.  "I have a problem with Trump being a complete narcissist who is only working for his own interest and does not appear to care if the entire world burns. That’s not a partisan position. I have eyeballs and ears, and I think calling late night partisan is just roughing the ref. And we don’t even want to be refs, but they perceive us as refs. I reject the partisan description. Partisan means you’re never, ever going to make a joke about a Democrat, and that’s just not true. There’s just no comparison of how fertile the fields are." (New York Times, 04.30.26)

“The first Americans I met in life were the characters I met in my treasured childhood novels,” British Queen Camilla said during a public appearance at the New York Public Library. “I knew even then: The books are best friends you can have, in good times and bad.”  (New York Times, 04.30.26)

“The Americans obviously have no strategy,” said German chancellor Friedrich Merz, “and the problem with such conflicts is always that you don’t just have to go in, you also have to get out again. We saw that very painfully in Afghanistan for 20 years. We saw that in Iraq. So this situation is, as I said, at least ill-considered, and I do not see at the moment what strategic exit the Americans are choosing now.”  (New York Times, 04.30.26)