He's always a very smooth operator who watches his words very carefully and doesn't say things lightly.
- Mr Jackie Healy-Rae on fellow Independent TD Mr Tom Gildea, whose attack on Mrs Nora Owen in the Dβil angered the Opposition
Why can't I read or write? Why can't I go to school which I enjoyed so much and which gave me so much satisfaction? Why, when my friends have finished university, will I still be waiting to finish school? Why will I always be separated from my friends when they go ahead and I stand still? Why me? Why?
- Italian student Guido Nasi, who was paralysed from the neck down due to a violent assault in Dublin two years ago. His attacker was jailed during the week.
The average man on the street is not going to be conscious of the [health] strategy and talk about triage nurses and GP centres. That doesn't gel with them. Medical cards do.
- A Fianna Fβil backbench TD on the Government's decision to freeze extending medical card entitlement
Their numbers had thinned. Delegates were in sombre mood. Their grey faces, furrowed brows and slumped shoulders told the story. The whiff of embalming fluid hung in the air. The dirge-like drone from the platform announced the presence of the chief mortician David Trimble, you are history.
- The DUP's deputy leader, Peter Robinson, mocks the UUP's party conference in an address to his own party's conference
Some may call it a medical breakthrough. I believe it is a moral breakdown.
- President of the US National Catholic Alliance, Mr Raymond Flynn, on the announcement that a Massachusetts firm had cloned a human embryo so it could be used for stem-cell research
When I saw him last time he was obviously very unwell but he was cracking jokes like he always was. And he'll be sorely missed. He's a beautiful man. The world will miss him.
- Paul McCartney on fellow Beatle George Harrison, who died yesterday
We lost today but we're still happy because Diane knows we will be together for that little bit longer.
- Mr Brian Pretty, whose wife Diane lost her legal battle in Britain for the right to an assisted suicide
The responsibility is yours. No one can relieve you of it and no one wants to.
- Germany's Foreign Minister, Mr Joschka Fischer, addressing the Afghan delegations who gathered in Bonn to decide on their country's future
We are being told more than ever, no story is worth dying for.
- BBC producer Kevin Bishop on working in Afghanistan. Eight journalists have been killed there in the last two weeks
What is not in order is taking shoes and gold teeth fillings from prisoners who are being slaughtered. It is not in order to have 160 prisoners slaughtered on the side of the road.
- Labour TD Michael D. Higgins responds after he was ruled out of order in the Dβil for raising the killing of hundreds of Taliban prisoners
If Palestinian terrorists intended to give the US mission a complete example of what Israel has been facing for the last weeks and months, this is it.
- Israeli political adviser Mr Zalman Shoval on an incident in which Palestinian gunmen killed two civilians and injured dozens of others in a town in northern Israel. A US envoy was visiting Israel at the time