On the day of the race, just after it started, I saw the next global [weather] prediction and I said, "Oh shit, this is Armageddon."
- Roger Badham, a professional forecaster for yachtsmen, on the sudden weather change which led to the Sydney-to-Hobart race tragedy
Guilt gets me out of bed each morning. I'm riddled with it.
- Angela's Ashes author, Frank McCourt
You go into an airport bookstore and there's no Updike there, there's no Updike at all. I'm a vanished man, a nonentity as far as mass readership goes.
- Writer John Updike
What are you celebrating? We have, I am afraid, squeezed God out of our culture and so, paradoxically, we have almost succeeded in removing Christ out of Christmas.
- The leader of the Catholic Church in England and Wales, Cardinal Basil Hume, on the growing secularisation and materialism of Christmas
Their criminal aggression was against not only Iraq but also against humanity, mankind and the principles called for by Jesus.
- Saddam Hussein, on the Anglo-American bombing
Don't socialites like to live? I would not class his lifestyle as over the top.
- Linda Wachner, an Ameri- can businesswoman who made a fortune selling lingerie, on her friend Peter Mandelson
I'd like to see Alan's picture in every Garda station and down in Templemore saying "an off-duty guard killed this man when he was drunk".
- Eileen Jones, on her son, who was killed by a Garda drunk driver, Martin Shankey Smith
We need to take this country by the scruff of the neck . . . and deregulate.
- The Tanaiste, Mary Harney, on the licensing of taxis and pubs
The leading republican of his generation who led the IRA away from military campaigns and into socialist politics.
- The Workers' Party, in a tribute to Cathal Goulding, who has died
I'm looking forward to next year when, if the Lord spares us, we will all be free.
- Kathleen Watkins, wife of Gay Byrne, on the end of his radio days
My son was the last person to be executed at Her Majesty's pleasure - executed, for that's what he was.
- David Wright, father of Billy Wright, the Portadown loyalist shot dead by an INLA inmate in the Maze Prison last year
There can be no room in our society for these cowardly sick animals who, like their republican counterparts, have chosen women and children as the targets for their criminal campaign.
- Vincent McKenna, of Families against Intimidation and Terror, on the bomb attack on the home of an Armagh Catholic family, reportedly by loyalists
I was president, guest of the Chilean nation and of their president. I shook hands but no more.
- The former president, Mary Robinson, asked about her handshake with Gen Augusto Pinochet
It was the British who banished poitin. I am in favour of upholding the law, but not Cromwell's law.
- Tommie Mac Donnchada, of Leitir Moir, Connemara
Please forget the past and please be sorry for me. Please, brothers and sisters, forget the past and join together to develop the country.
- Former Khmer Rouge head of state, Khieu Samphan, in an apology for the "killing fields" reign of terror