Verbatim: Sep. 4, 2006

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"These are challenging times, and they're difficult times, and they're straining the psyche of our country." --GEORGE W. BUSH, U.S. President, on the Iraq war's domestic impact

"It grieves me so much that we had not told the American people how tough and difficult this task would be." --JOHN McCAIN, Republican Senator from Arizona, criticizing the Bush Administration for "underestimating the size of the task" in Iraq and leading people to think it would be "some kind of day at the beach." The White House replied that President Bush had been open about the difficulty of the mission from the start

"You guys in New York can't get a hole in the ground fixed, and it's five years later. So let's be fair." --RAY NAGIN, New Orleans mayor, when asked on 60 Minutes about his city's stop-and-go post-Katrina reconstruction efforts

"We have demonstrated, for the first time, that human embryonic stem cells can be generated without interfering with the embryo's potential for life." --ROBERT LANZA, leader of a team that has developed a method to harvest and grow human embryonic stem cells without destroying the embryos. Scientists and politicians say questions about viability and ethics remain

"When that Napster guy came up across, it was like, 'Everybody's gettin' music for free.' I was like, 'Well, why not? It ain't worth nothing anyway.'" --BOB DYLAN, singer-songwriter, in a Rolling Stone interview in which he praises records and says CDs' sound quality is "atrocious." Dylan's new album, Modern Times, comes out this week

For more daily sound bites, visit time.com/quotes Sources: White House; Washington Post; CBS; Newsday; Rolling Stone