Verbatim

"We are better prepared. We are safer."
JOHN NEGROPONTE, U.S. Director of National Intelligence, responding to critics who cited a leaked National Intelligence Estimate (NIE) as proof that the Iraq war has worsened the terrorist threat. The NIE—portions of which were declassified last week—calls the war a jihadist "cause célèbre"

"I hope she's the candidate because nothing will energize my [constituency] like Hillary Clinton. If Lucifer ran, he wouldn't."
JERRY FALWELL, evangelist and right-wing activist, on a possible Clinton run for U.S. President. He later apologized for his "totally tongue-in-cheek" remark

"With the calm passing of time, China and South Korea may be perceived to be in the wrong."
JUNICHIRO KOIZUMI, outgoing Prime Minister of Japan, on complaints from neighboring countries over his visits to the controversial Yasukuni Shrine honoring Japan's war dead, in his final statement before leaving office

"The baby has been thrown out with the bathwater. But the baby will be retrieved."
KRIT GARNJANA-GOONCHORN, Thailand's senior foreign-affairs official for both the previous government and the new ruling military junta, promising that restrictions on civil liberties imposed after the recent coup would eventually be removed

"He is not a Kazakh. What he represents is a country of Boratastan, a country of one."
ROMAN VASILENKO, Kazakhstan press secretary, on Borat Sagdiyev, the bumptious, fictional Kazakh TV reporter created by British comedian Sacha Baron Cohen. Borat, whose antics have drawn the ire of Kazakh authorities, was turned away from the White House during President Nursultan Nazarbayev's visit to Washington

"Don't tell anyone up here but I've lost a few little things already, like my lip-gloss."
ANOUSHEH ANSARI, entrepreneur who paid $20 million for a visit to the International Space Station, blogging from space about the difficulty of keeping track of her things in zero-gravity conditions