This Week They Said

How come you thought we fled? Perhaps because if a similar situation befell your country, you and your family would flee - if…

How come you thought we fled? Perhaps because if a similar situation befell your country, you and your family would flee - if you had one, of course. I did not commence [this letter] with the customary "dear sir", because you are not behaving like one.

- Mira Markovic, wife of Slobodan Milosevic, in an open letter to the British Foreign Secretary, Robin Cook, who alleged that she and the Milosevic children were not in Yugoslavia

I just want a big hug. I need a bit of love and really want to be with the rest of my family.

- Sanije, a young woman Kosovan refugee in Albania

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The moment the mine exploded the children and their mother were thrown far away . . . scattered around, one on this side, one on the other side, 10 metres or 15 metres away from the car.

- Ibush Berisha, father of the family killed by a Serb landmine last Sunday

Bill Clinton hopes that Milosevic will capitulate, give up the whole of Yugoslavia. We will not allow this. This is a strategic place. We simply cannot ditch Milosevic. We want to embrace him as tight as possible.

- Russia's President Boris Yeltsin, quoted on the Interfax news agency

Heaven only knows what we will find when we go into Kosovo . . . my generation never thought to see those scenes in Europe again.

- Tony Blair

At 3.10 a.m. [Thursday] NATO committed a criminal act without precedence - an assassination attempt against the president of a sovereign state. To say that President Milosevic was not personally targeted, but his home is, is the climax of NATO's cynicism.

- Goran Matic, Yugoslav minister without portfolio

Nothing will happen to your soldiers. We are a very old people with a long tradition of respecting POWs. They are healthy. The Geneva Convention is respected.

- Slobodan Milosevic, asked on American TV about the three US captives

The highest duty of a judge is impartiality, as well as the appearance of impartiality, and as my last duty and so that confidence can be restored in the administration of justice, I have decided to offer my resignation as judge of the Supreme Court.

- Hugh O'Flaherty, judge at the centre of the Sheedy affair

I believe that what Mr Kelly did was a disgrace, and his failure to explain why he did it is a further disgrace and the Minister's [Mr O'Donoghue] failure to get answers is a further disgrace.

- The Fine Gael leader, John Bruton, on Cyril Kelly's conduct in the Sheedy case

I don't expect either side to lose all but neither do I expect either side to win all.

- The Taoiseach, Mr Ahern, after talks on the peace process

Well, none, I think . . . It was a courtesy call . . .

- David Trimble, asked what significance he attached to his meeting with the Pope

Above all, no fuss. The future is in God's hands.

- Cardinal Basil Hume, announcing that he is dying of cancer

They were outcasts. Kids would make fun of them. They would rip on them.

- Nick Zupancic, a student at Columbine High School, on those responsible for the mass shooting

Tell everyone it's not the first time I have died in Coventry.

- Folk musician Dave Swarbrick, former violinist with Fairport Convention, after the Daily Telegraph reported his death in the English midlands city