Selected quotes from around the world
You can put lipstick on a pig. It's still a pig.- US Democratic Party presidential candidate Barack Obama on claims by John McCain and Sarah Palin that they stand for change.
What did you want us to do? Wave our penknives in the air and wipe the bloody snot off our noses?- Vladimir Putin, Russian prime minister, on Moscow's military intervention in South Ossetia.
Go to hell a hundred times.- Venezuelan president Hugo Chavez expelling the US ambassador to Caracas.
I think we may have to rewrite our textbooks.- Fabiola Gianotti, a project leader at CERN's particle-accelerator, which is expected to raise science's understanding of the universe to a new level.
I'm going to try to win an eighth Tour de France.- Lance Armstrong announcing that he is coming out of retirement.
We see such reports as not only worthless, but rather as a conspiracy plot.- Song il-Ho, a North Korean spokesman, denying reports that the country's leader, Kim Jong-il, is seriously ill.
When we got off, she was a floating hulk.- Captain Colm Newport, who gave the order to abandon ship after the training vessel Asgard II started to sink off the Bay of Biscay.
There must be no bulldozing and no bullying of the Irish.- British foreign secretary David Miliband saying on a visit to Dublin that Ireland's EU partners must give the Government the time it needs to devise a considered response to the rejection of the Lisbon Treaty.
If there was an opt-out it would mean that we would not be able to participate any more in EU-organised missions such as Chad, and that would come as a great shock and great disappointment to everyone in this country, whether they voted Yes or No.- Minister for Defence Willie O'Dea vowing to oppose any Lisbon Treaty solution which would involve Ireland opting out of EU defence commitments.
A rabbit caught in the headlights.- Labour leader Eamon Gilmore on Taoiseach Brian Cowen's response to the economic downturn.