There was one boy had half his leg blown off and it was lying there with the wee shoe still on it. He didn't cry or anything. He was just in shock. - Dorothy Boyle (59) on the aftermath of the Omagh bombing
You could only be impressed by the fact that whoever planted the bomb yesterday in that maze of streets had to have walked through children and mammies and daddies to get away and they could only have seen people going about the humblest of chores. - The President, Mrs McAleese, in Omagh
They picked them up on Friday morning. They were clearly so much in love. They couldn't stop looking at each other. The girl wanted me to take a photograph of her fiance for her locket. I joked that she'd always have him with her. She held the locket, smiled and laughed. I heard just this morning her body was identified by finding the locket. - Town photographer Ed Winters
There is a huge gap in our world now. I've had Adrian for 21 years and I feel alone without him. I didn't want to get out of bed this morning. But for my Patricia's sake and the sake of our two daughters, I did. - Adrian's father, Michael Gallagher
They are undiluted fascists . . . These murderers are the enemies of the people of Ireland. - SDLP leader John Hume
I condemn it without any equivocation whatsoever. - The Sinn Fein president, Gerry Adams
The `Real IRA' . . . does have, in spite of some claims to the contrary, an incestuous relationship with the Provisional IRA at grassroots level. It is therefore wrong to assume that supporters of IRA/Sinn Fein played no part in Saturday's events. - Convicted IRA killer turned informer, Sean O'Callaghan
This is what was predicted and what should be expected. The policy of successive governments has been to appease terrorism, to reward those who practice terrorism with political concessions and then to give them an easy ride out of jail. - Lord Tebbitt, whose wife was left paralysed by an IRA bomb in Brighton
If they in the name of something, and I am not too sure what it is, believe they have some God-given right to go out and involve themselves in the sort of carnage we have seen, well, I am not going to allow them to do that. Whatever is necessary has to be done. - The Taoiseach, Mr Ahern, on the bombers
I'm not a supporter of internment but I say to you that it was an option that I would clearly consider if I thought it was a good idea, but I don't. - The Northern Secretary, Dr Mo Mowlam
We are terribly upset about what is taking place . . . I am frightened out of my life that they will do something to my children. - Bernadette Sands-McKevitt's reported comments to a Father Desmond Campbell as her neighbours in Blackrock, Co Louth, prepared to picket her home in an expression of outrage
So I sat there with them, alternating between a sense of helplessness and my innermost self telling me what I know to be true: that even now, especially now, we cannot give up. - Tony Blair, on confronting the bomb victims
Unless you repent, no ideological or political consideration will even begin to exonerate you from the great sin against God, against humanity, and against this community of which you now stand guilty. - The Catholic Bishop of Derry, Dr Seamus Hegarty, addressing the bombers directly