This is a very dangerous time indeed, and we are calling on all the political parties to recognise the potential that an incident like this has to return us to the horrors of the past.
- The Sinn Fein chairman, Mr Mitchel McLaughlin, on the murder of a Catholic, Mr Brian Service, by loyalists
Sometimes with his mother he sat in the back garden looking at the flowers, the sky beyond, and the mountains slightly further, wondering and taking in the beauty of it all. He wondered at our sectarianism, our bigotry.
- Father Kenneth Brady, at the funeral of Mr Service
There is a certain ominous tone coming to some of the Sinn Fein statements which we find unhelpful. We notice a disengagement of Sinn Fein leadership . . . An ominous line is beginning to creep into some of the language of Sinn Fein.
- The First Minister of Northern Ireland, Mr David Trimble, at Stormont
It is quite clear to any close observer, as everybody in this House is, that we are unlikely to see any move on decommissioning in the immediate future.
- The Taoiseach, Mr Ahern, in the Dail
As long as even one member of the RUC is a member of a new police force, that force will not be acceptable.
- Father Des Wilson, to the Patten Commission on Policing
It is a bit of a nuisance, I have to confess. I suppose when everything else is going well somebody has to find something to go on about and make it dramatic.
- The Taoiseach, Mr Ahern, on media coverage of his private life
We are in real danger of moving from the Celtic Tiger to the Celtic Ostrich in a few short years.
- Mr David McWilliams, the economist reputed to have predicted and first used the term Celtic Tiger, forecasting a downturn
We are what we are. We are all different, the product of both our genes and our experience.
- Mr Ron Davies, MP and former Welsh secretary
A sustained, bloody arrogant coup d'etat.
- The Nobel Prize-winning black novelist Toni Morrison, denouncing President Clinton's indictment in the Starr report
I'm not even angry at them any more. I'm just sorry . . . The ones that are consumed with personal animosity toward me or toward Hillary, I think, are just angry because they thought they and their crowd would always be able to drive up to the West Wing to work every day.
- Mr Clinton, on his detractors
You learn not to make jokes, otherwise you find the Germans getting it 10 minutes after the Swedes.
- British Labour MEP Ms Glenys Kinnock on the perils of speaking in the European Parliament
You have to go back to the death of Dylan Thomas or Lorca to find a time which so expresses that moment when a poet's death is expressed as a breach in nature.
- Irish Nobel laureate, Seamus Heaney, at the funeral of the late Poet Laureate, Ted Hughes, who died last week
I thought I did very well. The guy came with a big, big heart and he had a very hard head.
- Naseem Hamed, who was booed during the fight, on his points win over Wayne McCullough in Atlantic City
I tried to interview him once. I had heard he was in the Shelbourne. I rang his room. His voice answered: "Mr Shostakovich is not here." It was him. I didn't get an interview.
- The art critic and essayist Brian Fallon, talking about the composer