This Week They Said

I DIDN`T do it. I didn't do anything.

I DIDN`T do it. I didn't do anything.

- British nanny, Louise Woodward, found guilty of the second-degree murder of baby Matthew Eappen by a jury in Massachusetts

You're the one who wanted to bring in extradition. You are anti-Irish.

- A passer-by to Derek Nally on the campaign trail in Waterford

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I'm not. I'm anti-criminal.

- Derek Nally

I'm going to be looking at a new outfit for my installation.

- Dana [Rosemary Scallon], on how she'd spend polling day

At three I wanted to be a cow, at five a train driver, at seven a fighter pilot, at 10 a footballer, at 13 a pop star, at 15 anything but a virgin and at 20 I didn't have a clue.

- British comedian Harry Enfield

Life really is a bind when all your friends are burly tattooed scaffolders, petty thieves and barrow boys.

- Singer Boy George

If there's 10,000 people of all ages and races screaming and dancing and going wild out there, and one person in the audience decides to do a hatchet job, how could that be right?

- Michael Flatley, of Lord of the Dance, criticising the critics

We will not agree anything that undermines the rights of the people of Northern Ireland, still less any Trojan horse that would be, in the fateful words of Hugh Logue in 1974, a vehicle that will trundle us into a united Ireland.

- The Ulster Unionist Party leader, David Trimble

Gordon Brown has apparently gone mad, or sane, depending on your view on European Monetary Union.

- Labour MP Austin Mitchell

To lose astonishment and wonder is not to mature so much as to become extinguished: to go from being a 200-watt bulb to being a 60watt bulb.

- British philosopher and doctor of geriatric medicine, Prof Raymond Tallis

We want everyone to just take a deep breath and think about where we are.

- President Clinton's spokesman Mike McCurry, on the US stock market roller-coaster

I come from an operatic family. My great grandmother was known as the Tasmanian Nightingale.

- Horror film star Christo- pher Lee, who is embarking on a singing career at the age of 74

But if there's anyone in the parliamentary party who has anything to say to me, let them put their cards on the table. The one thing I do not like is this talking into their hands behind my back . . . that sort of nonsense. I've been around too long for that.

- The Labour leader, Dick Spring, on stories about a threat to his leadership

I'm a politician. I can make false promises.

- Dick Spring

I am unable to think of a time before I had heard of Oscar Wilde. It is as if he had been with me always, like Christ and the queen.

- Actor Stephen Fry, star of Wilde which opened in Dublin yesterday

This is not a game for nancyboys. There can be no place for them - we are playing for the World Cup, not a peanut.

- Belgium soccer coach, Georges Leekens, before his team's clash with the Republic of Ireland last Wednesday

Were the team less motivated than in other matches?

- A reporter to Mick Mc- Carthy at the press conference after the match

Somebody ask me another question before I get angry.

- McCarthy

We are not in turmoil.

- William Hague, the Tory leader, on the state of his party