This week they said

It doesn't get much better than this. - Niall Quinn after Ireland's last-minute equaliser against Germany

It doesn't get much better than this.- Niall Quinn after Ireland's last-minute equaliser against Germany

I said don't play Germany off the park and come off losing 1-0.

- Ireland manager Mick McCarthy on the half-time team talk that set the side up for a last-gasp 1-1 draw

I looked at my watch in the last 10 minutes and I thought we weren't going to do it. I think everyone thought that.

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- Ireland striker Damien Duff

Germany did not do what they should have in the second half. We played too much in defence and built a wall some 30 metres in front of our own goal.

- German soccer great Franz Beckenbauer speaks for a shell-shocked nation

You could argue it's our best-ever win in the modern era. We've never beaten an elite team like this in a World Cup.

- US soccer coach Bruce Arena after his team beats a hotly tipped Portugal 3-2 in one of the biggest World Cup upsets ever

Judge me on what you see me doing and saying.

- Belfast's new Lord Mayor, Alex Maskey, the first Sinn Féin councillor to hold the position

Building a lasting and just peace on this island is my great political goal, the priority that I will continue to put above all else.

- Taoiseach Bertie Ahern sets out the agenda for his new Government

Fine Gael's mourning is over. This party is getting up off the floor.

- New Fine Gael leader, Enda Kenny, sounds a defiant note

I am beginning to wonder why I work and invest my money when it's all going to go up in a nuclear mushroom.

- Delhi lawyer Makvika Rajkotia-Luthra as tensions increase between India and Pakistan over the disputed Kashmir province

Once Arafat is gone, others will take his place who'll agree to a ceasefire.

- Israel's Finance Minister, Silvan Shalom, hints that it is set to expel Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat after a suicide bombing kills 17 Israelis on a bus

It was like a broom. Every hair stuck out, and it looked like an open umbrella which could not be shut. It was horrible. I looked like Osama bin Laden.

- A Hong Kong woman who unsuccessfully sued a hair salon which she claimed made her look like the terrorist leader

We now know that thousands of trained killers are plotting to attack us, and this terrible knowledge requires us to act differently.

- President George Bush announces the creation of a 170,000-strong agency for home security

The minute a film is made, a book dwindles away and becomes nothing.

- William Nicholson turns down $1 million for the film rights of his best-selling Wind Singer children's trilogy because he wants them to remain in people's imaginations

We are told vaguely it is next Tuesday like the papers say, but it is all secret. I have to keep it dead secret, you know.

- Sir John Leslie, of Castle Leslie, Co Monaghan, on rumours that Paul McCartney is to wed girlfriend Heather Mills there next week .