This week they said

You can't explain loneliness

You can't explain loneliness. When you're out and you lie down you get thinking, "Did I do wrong?" When you've lost the love of your life it cries in you and you cry yourself.

- Martin (39), from Athy, Co Kildare, a man homeless in Dublin

This is justice in Wonderland.

- Neil Hamilton, on losing his appeal against his libel defeat last year

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I have to be fit to work, and I have to work to take care of myself, and I have to be responsible for me, because I sure don't want anyone else to be responsible for me. That's the big lesson in life.

- Oueen of vamps Eartha Kitt (73)

People get angry at Mike Tyson for saying he's going to rip his opponent's heart out. What do they think warriors do at night, for God's sake? Read Alfred Tennyson.

- Billy Connolly, comedian

Analysis of modern history shows that when Republicans were heading the US administration, US-Soviet relations were not harmed.

- Vladimir Putin, Russian President

They have been found guilty and they will be disciplined accordingly.

- Executive officer of the Grand Orange Lodge, George Patton, on the expulsion from the order of two men jailed for posses- sion of documents likely to be of use to terrorists

If the Democrats spend the next four years training their supporters to punch a ballot, they may have less trouble in 2004.

- Calvin Wheeler, Auburn, Washington

Fred Astaire was the only one who, when he moved around off screen, you could immediately tell he was a dancer. Even the way he blew his nose had that grace.

- Actress Leslie Caron, comparing all her famous dancing partners

A woman who cries looks sweet and vulnerable. A crying man looks like a self-pitying prat.

- Newspaper columnist Julie Burchill

We are now well into the last month of the last year of the 20th century and, indeed, of the millennium. However, little appears to have been said about plans to mark this momentous occasion. Has it, by any chance, been overlooked?

- Letter to Editor, the Times (London)