Since you are married to a woman 25 years younger than yourself many here are wondering if, like your law partner Bob Dole, you have ever used Viagra.

- President of the National Press Club, Doug Harbrecht, questioning Senator George Mitchell at a reception

I agree with your reaction but the answer is no. And I have a six-month old son to prove that I don't need it.

- Senator Mitchell's reply

£30,000 is the largest contribution I have received during any election campaign.

- Ray Burke explaining the Gogarty donation to the Dail last September, a month before his resignation

I'm hoping for better luck this time.

- Albert Reynolds, as his appeal arising out of the Sunday Times libel action opened this week

You can love us, you can hate us, but you cannot ignore us.

- PUP leader David Ervine on increased support for his party

Zero tolerance was to mean whatever John O'Donoghue said it meant, depending on whether there was a full moon and how Jackie Healy-Rae was feeling.

- The Fine Gael spokesman, Jim Higgins

We have learned since then that they put a plastic bag over her head and she suffocated.

- Helen McKendry, on the IRA decision to identify the secret burial site of her mother, Jean McConville, who was abducted and murdered by the organisation in 1972

I want to say to Mo Mowlam, Gerry Adams, Tony Blair and all the other republican scum that we will not be trampled off the streets of Ulster by the RUC.

- Paul Berry (22) of the DUP and the youngest member of the Assembly, at Portadown

I don't know whether I can pick up the pieces. I don't have many pieces left in my life.

- Christine Quinn, the mother of three boys murdered in Ballymoney last Sunday

Viagra? Is that a new car? What are you laughing at?

- Dustin the Turkey

I was just thinking that the whole Irish nation is watching me, they're depending on me to score this and I have to put this away. Nah, seriously, I wasn't thinking that at all. I just put the ball down on the spot and stroked the ball home.

- Liam George, scorer of the decisive penalty in the under-18 soccer victory in Cyprus

The verdict indicates wrongdoing . . . The people of Ireland have been led a merry dance. Not all by accident. Irish national radio and television and elememts of the Irish media, puporting to have superior swimming knowledge to the rest of us, have blissfully ignored the obvious and unpalatable in favour of the feel-good factor.

- Sean Gordon, the Irish Amateur Swimming Association's recording officer, on the Michelle de Bruin ban

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

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, adressing the Omagh bombers directly

Those words were music to ears all over the world . . . Thank you, sir.

- President Clinton, on a statement by the Sinn Fein president, Gerry Adams, that violence should be consigned to the past

I want to make friends with Dr Paisley.

- Sinn Fein president, Gerry Adams

Due to shortages please do not remove crockery and cutlery from here.

- Notice in the members' canteen at Stormont

I'm not the president of London.

- Mary McAleese, explaining in The Times [of London] why she was not as well known there as in Ireland

Better by far to be scorned by the world, "the great and the good", and to hold on to one's principles than to be lavished with praise and applauded by the movers and shakers for having truck with terrorists.

- The DUP deputy leader, Peter Robinson, after John Hume and David Trimble received jointly the Nobel Peace Prize

I'm so privileged to live in this island with this man.

- U2's Bono in a tribute to Mr Hume

Those whom we commemorate here were doubly tragic. They fell victim to a war against oppression in Europe. Their memory, too, fell victim to a war for independence at home in Ireland . . . Respect for the memory of one set of heroes was often at the expense of respect for the memory of the other.

- The President, Mrs McAleese, at the Armistice Day commemorations in Belgium

I'll give you a good reason. The IRA won't do it. That's the reason.

Martin McGuinness of Sinn Fein, pressed on why the IRA would not start handing over weapons

The Irish Government have acknowledged the reality that we are looking at a United Kingdom outcome.

- The UUP leader, David Trimble

London even stopped passing sensitive intelligence to the White House because it often seemed to find its way to the IRA.

- Former US ambassador to the UK Raymond Seitz, who in a forthcoming book lays bare the celebrated Anglo-American row which followed the granting of Mr Adams's first US visa in 1994 by the Clinton White House

You have to laugh. If you are tough they will remove any vestige of femininity and if they detect any femininity they will conclude you do not have the balls for the job.

- RTE's director of radio, Helen Shaw, on the reaction to her appointment