Selected quotes from the week
It is time to close the door on the tradition of armed struggle.
- The President, Mrs McAleese.
Our family has only one concern, and that is the capture and conviction of our brother's killers.
- Paula McCartney, sister of murdered Belfast man Robert McCartney, who met members of the Government in Dublin this week.
I might have my own views on who is on the [ IRA] army council, but I don't know.
- The Taoiseach, Mr Ahern.
This is not my village, this is not Hotkan - I wish I had died with the others.
- Zebra Mirzaei, a survivor of the Iran earthquake which claimed 500 lives.
We would be adamant that the retrial has to take place and take place very quickly for there to be any credibility restored to what in my view is a criminal justice system that's in tatters.
- Denis Murphy, father of Brian Murphy, after the man convicted of Brian's manslaughter outside a nightclub nearly five years ago had his sentence quashed.
The system in which they operate fails to offer the value and range of services that their customers and the modern Irish economy needs.
- John Fingleton, chairman of the Competition Authority, which has reported a lack of competition amongst solicitors and barristers.
This is our final choice, and there can be no way back . . . Any kind of turn towards totalitarianism would be impossible.
- Russian President Vladimir Putin insists he is committed to democracy.
To the Daily Mail group I say no one in Britain is less qualified to complain about anti-Semitism.
- Ken Livingstone, mayor of London, refuses to apologise to the newspaper group whose reporter he likened to a concentration camp guard.
It is an extremely difficult relationship. Chirac thinks that Bush is superficial. Bush thinks Chirac is unprincipled and too wily for his own good.
- Guillaume Parmentier, of the French Centre in Paris, discusses Bush's attempt this week to smooth over Franco-American differences.
We got a call from a San Francisco hotel shortly after he had stayed there. They wanted us to pay $2,400 for his three nights. There was a $2,000 item . . . something to do with an ice machine shot through with a gun.
- Larry Kramer, executive editor of the Examiner, of San Francisco, to which Hunter S Thompson contributed during the 1980s.
I am happy the way I am - I have to be doing something.
- Bricklayer Noel McDonald says he will keep the day job despite winning a €1.9 million Lotto jackpot.
A little operation? That depends for whom.
- Pope John Paul II, on being told he had to have a "little" operation on his throat.