Billy Wright was executed for one reason and one reason only, and that was for directing and waging his campaign of terror against the nationalist people from his prison cell.
- What a Belfast court was told Christopher McWilliams, one of the three INLA gunmen alleged to have murdered Loyalist Volunteer Force leader Billy Wright in a gun attack inside the Maze Prison last weekend, said as he was about to be charged with the killing
When Mo Mowlam was appointed Northern Ireland Secretary, the Maze was already a scandal. She relaxed the discipline still further. This is prison government of the terrorists by the terrorists for the terrorists.
- Lord Rees-Mogg
This prison is unique in the whole of the democratic world. Nowhere else is there such a concentration of dedicated paramilitaries and terrorists, and that does make for a very unique situation.
- The Northern security minister, Adam Ingram, on the lapses of security that allowed INLA inmates to get hold of guns to shoot Wright dead
One begins to wonder if there are people on both sides who are really together in the sense that, having lived with Troubles, they can't live without them.
- The SDLP leader John Hume
Wright, Billy - Greater love hath no man than this, that he lay down his life for his friends. Very deeply regretted by his colleagues in HMP MAZE.
- An advertisement tribute from Wright's cellmates in the Belfast Telegraph last Monday
Those who murdered him were happy to get someone, and that someone, unfortunately, was Seamus Dillon.
- Father Seamus Rice to mourners of former republican prisoner Mr Dillon, shot dead as a reprisal
The peace process is shattered.
- Sinn Fein negotiator, Gerry Kelly
I am far from alone in having what is popularly perceived as necessary to be beautiful.
- Actress Cameron Diaz
Far from the public being over-sensitive about food-poisoning, they only know the half of it.
- Hugh Pennington, professor of bacteriology at the University of Aberdeen
When I go to market in TV my speaking voice is the only thing I've got to sell. Nobody stays tuned for the bewitching symmetry of my features. If I can't address the audience in my trade-mark effortless drone, I'm a dead duck.
- Clive James
There are genuine agoraphobics who become panic-stricken out of doors. And those whose fears vanish as the betting shops open.
- Tory Peer Lord Tebbit, on benefit scroungers
We are now part of a union of 15 European states . . . We can choose to turn in on ourselves and turn our back on the stranger . . . we could decide to share some of [our] wealth, resources and opportunities with foreigners, as so many societies in the past did for our people.
- The Catholic Primate, Archbishop Sean Brady, on refugees
I really like Scholes - he's got great legs.
- Bobby Robson on Manchester United's Paul Scholes
During Israel's invasion of Lebanon . . . I gathered the Lebanese resistance leaders together and told them: do whatever you want with the US, British and other forces, but I do not want a single Italian soldier to be hurt.
- Syrian Defence Minister Mustafa Tlass, who saved Italian troops from attack in Beirut in 1983 over a crush he had on actress Gina Lollobrigida
