This Week They Said

Always with one foot in oblivion and the other in immortality.

Always with one foot in oblivion and the other in immortality.

- George Best biographer Gordon Burn pays tribute to the footballer, who died yesterday.

We don't see a complete meltdown right away.

- Minister for Agriculture Mary Coughlan on the future of the Irish sugar industry after the EU agrees to roll back subsidies.

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There's no more that we can do.

- Taoiseach Bertie Ahern says the Government cannot prevent Irish Ferries' outsourcing plan.

A straight sectarian head-count.

- Francie Molloy, Sinn Féin Northern Assembly member, one of a number of Northern politicians to decry changes to local government in the North as likely to further divide the two communities.

Our top seller is a hoodie saying "I'm No Robbing Hood", while "No To Noonan" is also proving very popular.

- Larry Ryan, who owns a clothing firm in Cork which has designed a "hoodie" in honour of Fine Gael's Michael Noonan, who has criticised the wearing of hooded tops.

Our day starts busy. The first attacks happen in the morning, and patients start arriving by 7.15am. By 8am all these beds are full.

- Omar Ta'ie, an A&E doctor in Baghdad.

He is wrong, there is no doubt about that - it is a dreadful error. He needs to be spoken to and sent on some retraining.

- British MEP Vera Baird after a judge in Swansea directs a jury that a Donegal man cannot be found guilty of rape because the alleged victim said she was drunk at the time.

Italy . . . is the least generous of the developed world with regard to aid, and that is a shame.

- Bob Geldof.

I am very slow now to go into any new place to get something to eat . . . I feel obliged to ring in advance to say I have a guide dog.

- Sr Bríd Smith, who has deteriorating eyesight, recalls being told to leave a south Dublin pub because she had a guide dog. She received €6,300 in compensation this week.

We've got to do our job smarter than we are doing now.

- Garda Commissioner Noel Conroy says the force must do more to catch drink-drivers.

Is the Corrib project another space shuttle rushing to launch at all costs without listening to reason about a flawed initial design or routing approach?

- A report by the Centre for Public Inquiry expresses misgivings over the controversial Corrib pipeline.

Could the person whose mobile phone it is please leave?

- Actor Richard Griffiths, who stopped mid-performance in the West End when an audience member's phone started to ring.

I think my work, the activism, will be forgotten.

- Bono wants to be remembered for his singing, not his campaigning.

The escape of these huge, ugly and dangerous spiders would have, undoubtedly, a very unnerving effect upon the majority of people in this country, accustomed as they are to small harmless varieties.

- Scotland Yard inspector Christopher Rolfe, writing in 1940, feared the IRA would unleash a deadly wave of Black Widow spiders in Britain. His concerns were contained in classified documents released this week.

It is looking like there is a possibility of somebody paying me a huge amount of money to go and lie on a beach for seven weeks.

- Patrick Kielty, the comedian, says he may host another season of Celebrity Love Island.