Verbatim

'Man, these Islamic guys want to cut my hands off. Maybe it's time for a change.' ABSHIR BOYAH, a Somali pirate boss, on mounting opposition to piracy among the country's religious leaders

'I'd have, like, seen this much ice and thought, Oh, my gosh, we were going to crash.' REBECCA SHAW, co-pilot of a plane that crashed near Buffalo, N.Y., in February, remarking on the wintry conditions in a cockpit recording before the fatal plunge

'We just wanted to gather and remember our babies.' ZHOU LIANGPING, of Juyuan, China, after local officials blocked memorials at the town's middle school marking the anniversary of the May 12, 2008, earthquake

'You give me a waterboard, Dick Cheney and one hour, and I'll have him confess to the Sharon Tate murders.' JESSE VENTURA, former Minnesota governor, saying the former Vice President should be prosecuted for approving "torture"

'He is the big fish that national Republicans have been looking for.' STUART ROTHENBERG, commentator, on Florida Governor Charlie Crist's U.S. Senate bid

'They smell blood.' BRUCE RIEDEL, former CIA analyst, on al-Qaeda's exploiting the turmoil in Pakistan to bolster its strength

'Some were beautiful, some were risqué, but, again, we're in the 21st century.' DONALD TRUMP, beauty-pageant co-owner, declaring that Miss California Carrie Prejean could keep her crown after topless photos of her surfaced online

Back & Forth:

Politics

'I think Rush Limbaugh was the 20th hijacker, but he was just so strung out on OxyContin, he missed his flight.' Comedian WANDA SYKES, slamming the conservative radio host at the White House Correspondents' Association dinner. Limbaugh publicly admitted in 2003 that he had battled an addiction to prescription painkillers

'These were nasty, vicious, mean, ugly comments and had no place at the dinner.' KARL ROVE, Fox News contributor and former senior adviser to President George W. Bush; Limbaugh did not respond to Sykes' remarks

Military

'I think it's the result of a chemical used in a bomb.' DR. MOHAMMAD AREF JALALI of Afghanistan's Herat Regional Hospital on burns suffered by villagers caught in a May 4 clash between U.S. and Taliban forces. Some human-rights groups say the burns were caused by U.S. troops using white phosphorus

'I can't say whether the insurgents used it, but we certainly didn't.' U.S. military spokesman COLONEL GREG JULIAN, accusing Taliban fighters of using the chemical, which illuminates targets in warfare, to "create a civilian-casualty crisis"

LEXICON

Credit munch n.-- Recession-induced comfort eating Usage: "Stressed-out Britons have piled on 20 million stone in a year trying to 'comfort eat' their way through the recession, according to [a] report out today. The condition--dubbed the credit munch--has seen three in five Britons put on weight in the past 12 months." --the U.K.'s Daily Express, May 11, 2009

For daily sound bites, visit time.com/quotes

Sources: New York Times; Wall Street Journal; Reuters; Huffington Post; CNN; New York Times; Washington Post