Verbatim

'Together we can continue the course set by President Putin.' DMITRI MEDVEDEV, newly installed President of Russia, vowing to continue the policies of his predecessor Vladimir Putin. Medvedev won 70% of the vote in the country's heavily criticized March 2 election

'You are a sad lackey of the empire, Uribe.' HUGO CHAVEZ, President of Venezuela, attacking pro-U.S. Colombian President Alvaro Uribe after Colombia's military launched a raid in Ecuador against Colombian rebels

'Is it not funny that those with 160,000 forces in Iraq accuse us of interference?' MAHMOUD AHMADINEJAD, President of Iran, following the first visit to Iraq by an Iranian President since the 1980s

'I just remember such a sense of relief, and of being a human being, when everything was shut off.' RUFUS WAINWRIGHT, musician, recalling the 2003 New York City power outage and explaining why he's encouraging the city's residents to boycott electricity on June 21 for what he calls a "blackout Sabbath"

'[We] were pretty much out of food, hadn't slept in days and were really cold. We had to reassess the whole situation.' MARK BOYLE (left), after failing in his attempt to walk from Britain to India without any money. Relying on the kindness of strangers, he got only as far as Calais, France (he doesn't speak French)

'It is not actually reality, but my reality, my way of surviving.' MISHA DEFONSECA, Belgian writer, apologizing after her best-selling memoir of surviving the Holocaust was revealed to be fake. She isn't Jewish and was never in the Warsaw ghetto, as she had claimed

MORE OF THE BEST QUOTES AT TIME.COM For daily sound bites, visit time.com/quote

Sources: Teleraph; Reuters; New York Times; New York magazine; BBC; AP