If I could unsay that interview, I would. I would not use the word "government".
- The Minister for Foreign Affairs, David Andrews, on his controversial remarks in a BBC interview when he referred to the proposed North-South executive body as "not unlike a government"
The timing was awful. Either Mr Andrews is incapable of the job or he is mischievous.
- David Ervine of the Progressive Unionist Party
I will walk on no grave of Ulster's honoured dead to do a deal with the IRA or the British government.
- DUP leader the Rev Ian Paisley speaking at his party's annual conference last weekend
I went back to the study hall where I met my husband at a debating competition and where, I am pleased to put it on record, I beat him.
- President Mary McAleese on going back to her old school yesterday in Belfast
If you manage to keep your head while all around are losing theirs, then you have seriously failed to grasp the gravity of the situation.
- Labour MP Bob Mar- shall-Andrews, QC
For a brief moment I believed Earl Spencer to be a dignified man but the more I read, the more he sounds like Henry VIII in a Gucci suit.
- Boy George
You'd have to be some kind of prize idiot to walk away from the beauty of Ava Gardner or a Lana Turner . . . but marry them? Yeah, of course, you try it and then it gets sticky.
- Bandleader and clarinettist, Artie Shaw (87), on his short-lived marriages to both women
My vanity is gone. The only thing I lift now is a fork.
- Sylvester Stallone
This may be the beginning of the end for the Conservative Party. At the next election it could be the third party of British politics and we may never see a Conservative government again.
- Michael Dobbs, former deputy chairman of the party
I give my warm wishes for a speedy recovery to the Tanaiste. I gather there was a lot of arm-twisting about the Government's position on the Electoral Bill.
- Alan Dukes (FG) to Mary Harney, who recently broke her arm in a fall
This is the biggest thing that has happened since the Shah left.
- An Iranian businessman, after the national team qualified for the World Cup
Rule 21 of the GAA [excluding British security forces from membership] has been described by the President as sectarian. Will the Taoiseach make the granting of £20 million to the GAA contingent on the dropping of that sectarian rule?
- The DL leader, Mr Proinsias De Rossa
This Budget further widens the gap between rich and poor.
- SIPTU president Jimmy Somers
My party leader . . . former party leader, Dick Spring.
- The Labour leader, Ruairi Quinn, in the Dail
If you manage to keep your head whole all around are losing theirs, then you have seriously failed to grasp the gravity of the situation.- Labour MP Bob Marshall-Andrews QC