This Week They Said

I don't know what to say. Everyone was so kind. I'm so used to having to defend myself

I don't know what to say. Everyone was so kind. I'm so used to having to defend myself. What do you say in a situation like that? How do you behave in a situation like that?

- The SDLP leader, John Hume, after he received the Nobel Peace Prize jointly with David Trimble

Better by far to be scorned by the world, "the great and the good", and hold on to one's principles than to be lavished with praise and applauded by the movers and shakers for having truck with terrorists.

- The DUP deputy leader, Peter Robinson, reacting to the award

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I'm so privileged to live in this island, with this man.

- U2's Bono in a tribute to Mr Hume

I find that south of the Border they like me.

- The former British prime minister Sir Edward Heath

Those of us who believe that words can hurt are seeking a balance. We do not wish a treasured human right to be hedged in by so many qualifications that the right itself becomes more theoretical than actual.

- President McAleese in her address to The Irish Times/ Harvard University Colloquium

Please don't torture me any more, sir, I made a mistake. Other fighters have made more. I'm just a human being trying to live my life.

- Boxer Mike Tyson appealing - successfully - for his licence to be returned

Can we stop this? I am feeling faint.

- FF Cork South Central candidate Sinead Behan, at the end of a 60-second "quiz" broadcast by RTE during which she was asked several questions in quick succession to which she answered: "I don't know"

I am experiencing profound happiness that what couldn't happen in Chile is finally happening abroad.

- Hortensia Busside Allende, whose husband, Salvador Allende Gossens, was toppled in a 1973 military coup by Gen Augusto Pinochet

What matters ultimately is not the punishment of one solitary, sick old man but the stability of Chile.

- Dr Sheila Cassidy, tortured under Gen Pinochet's regime

I saw them herded to their death. I heard the gunfire as they died.

- Adam Schesch, a survivor of the 1973 coup in Chile

I have better cause than most to remember that Chile, led at that time by Gen Pinochet, was a good friend to this country during the Falklands war.

- Baroness Thatcher calling for Gen Pinochet's release

I am sure that Lady Thatcher, when she reflects upon this, will realise the importance to Britain's constitution of having courts that are free from political intervention.

Foreign Secretary Robin Cook criticising the former prime minister's intervention

I wish to ask that the Dail come back next week for a debate on the black economy in the construction industry which has led to the jailing of two workers . . . Yesterday, I saw two workers like this.

- Joe Higgins of the Socialist Party, while handcuffed

The deputy is being disorderly . . . he is suspended from the service of the House.

- The Ceann Comhairle, Seamus Pattison

I was born in the back of a cab on Butt Bridge - and pronounced dead on arrival at the hospital.

- Proinnsias O Duinn, conductor of the RTE Concert Orchestra,

We fancied each other something rotten. That's all it was. To me she was always still my girlfriend.

- Sir Paul McCartney on his late wife Linda