When writing or speaking publicly, Brink seldom let a breath go by without cramming it full of adverb-bedazzled stentorian flourishes. Later, he would make a documentary about the earthquake that included this sentence: “Incredible are the stories of people who have known the awful power of the earth, straining to adjust to the ever-moving forces beneath its rocky crust; stories of people who desperately fought for their lives and marveled at the unexplainable miracles that literally snatched them from death; stories of tragedy, human dignity, and bravery that symbolize the events and the
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