Graydon Carter, Martin Amis, Salman Rushdie, and Sean Penn were all part of today's celebration in honoring one of the sharpest minds and eloquent writers of a generation. Yeah, we know, Sean Penn right?   Here's the program:

As you can tell, we aren't at the Great Hall of Cooper Union. For those in the same boat as us, Vanity Fair did all us a favor and posted its Alex Gibney-directed Christopher Hitchens tribute video (which was shown to attendees) on its site. It's not embeddable at the moment, so click here if you'd like to see it. 

Luckily we did send in one correspondent, who snapped cell phone pics of the program:

And yes, one Sean Penn:

New York Magazine, did a step better and sent writers Joe Hagan and Gabriel Sherman to live-tweet the event. From their tweets and the program, it looks like the ceremony was a mix of anecdotes and notables reading Hitchens' works. We picked out some of the more memorable one-liners: 

"Real monsters like Robert Macnamara and Henry Kissinger...but hey, forget it. Forget it of you can." Penn reading Hitch. #hitchensmemorial

— Joe Hagan (@joehagansays) April 20, 2012

Hitch and Amis once took booze into a Wesley Snipes film.#hitchensmemorial

— Joe Hagan (@joehagansays) April 20, 2012

Graydon closes by saying "As Christopher would say, may you all thrive."#hitchensmemorial

— Gabriel Sherman (@gabrielsherman) April 20, 2012

Stephen Fry on Hitchens's dislike of cricket and opera. To Hitch, it was torture. "Even Saddam wouldn't go that far."#hitchensmemorial

— Gabriel Sherman (@gabrielsherman) April 20, 2012

For Sherman and Hagan's full play-by-play head on over to Daily Intel. And if you want to read Hitchens in his own words, check his Atlantic archive.

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Alexander Abad-Santos