This Week They Said

You just come here like tourists. You are here for the show. Why don't you help to find my son? When will we get help?

You just come here like tourists. You are here for the show. Why don't you help to find my son? When will we get help?

- A victim of the Turkey earthquake, which claimed more than 10,000 lives

This wasn't a natural disaster; it was a human disaster.

- Japanese seismologist Dr Tsuneji Rikitake on the Turkish government's refusal to heed warnings and construct quake-resistant housing.

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Our thoughts are with the ordinary people who are suffering, but one should not forget that Turkey continues to occupy 37 per cent of Cyprus's territory.

- Spyros Kyprianou, President of the Cypriot House of Representatives

The day of the plastic bag is coming towards an end.

- Minister for the Environment, Mr Dempsey, on plans to impose a tax on plastic bags

There is no issue, except with 20 people.

- Father Jackie O'Connell, parish priest of Carragh, Co Kildare, on opposition to his plans to sell church property paid for by parishioners

I'm still around but when I go there won't be too many socialists left. This is a very, very sad occasion for me.

- Lord Fitt on the death of fellow SDLP founder member, Paddy Devlin

We are told that there are people who cannot be freed because their sentences haven't been confirmed yet. They have to be convicted before they can be liberated. It's Kafka or Bokassa - take your pick.

- Algerian lawyer Miloud Brahimi on President Abdelaziz Bouteflika's promise to pardon 5,000 Islamist sympathisers

A hippie happening.

- Donegal poet Cathal O Searcaigh on the Aran Islands poetry and prose festival

I think some of the chickens have already been eaten. I probably ate some of them myself and I don't feel any the worse for it.

- Marylise Lebranchu, France's junior minister for consumer affairs, on the health risk from meat and bonemeal contaminated by sewage in six French plants

These shares are covered in blood.

- Protesters outside a shareholders' meeting in Frankfurt of IG Farben, maker of the gas that killed millions of Jews

We would rather lose a thousand soldiers than lose an inch of land.

- China's Liberation Army daily on Taiwan's defence spending

Our stance has always been that the ads were legal and we would run them because we are not the conscience of the country.

- Nigel O'Mahony of Examiner Publications which after 10 years will no longer carry adverts for massage parlours and escort agencies

What is a chatline?

- Mr Justice O'Donovan seeks clarification during the In Dublin action in the High Court

Yep, there must be something in the air all right.

- Micheal O'Connor, from Mallow, Co Cork, on what might have helped him achieve a maximum 600 points in the Leaving Cert

What is happening is that the motorist is being seen as the problem and anything that is bad for them is a good thing.

- Conor Faughnan of the AA, on the Stillorgan Quality Bus Corridor