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'The era of apologizing for Republican mistakes of the past is now officially over. It is done.' MICHAEL STEELE, Republican National Committee chairman, during a speech to fellow GOP leaders about the party's future

'The taste of victory is the burden of responsibility.' DALIA GRYBAUSKAITE, outgoing European Union budget commissioner, on being the first woman elected President of Lithuania

'This has the makings of a really bad movie.' TERESITA SCHAFFER, an analyst at the Washington-based Center for Strategic and International Studies, on the prospect of Zalmay Khalilzad, George W. Bush's former ambassador to Afghanistan, being awarded a key post in the Afghan government

'The people in the south treat the northeast as a subrace of Brazilians.' ROBERTO QUIÑIERO, a market owner in Pedreiras, Brazil, criticizing government relief efforts after flooding in the region forced more than 260,000 people from their homes

'Took 'em long enough.' PAUL HOUSE, a 47-year-old former death-row inmate, on learning he had been exonerated after 22 years in a Tennessee prison

'This is about being a true-blooded American guy and girl.' A.J. LOWENTHAL, a deputy sheriff in Imperial County, Calif., on a Boy Scouts--affiliated program that teaches teens how to fight terrorism and illegal immigration

'I'd just been on a trip to Minnesota, where I can only kindly describe most of the people I saw as little houses.' ANNA WINTOUR, editor of Vogue, on the prevalence of obesity in the U.S.

Back & Forth:

Pentagon

'It is God's will that by doing good you should silence the ignorant talk of foolish men.' A biblical passage adorning a PENTAGON REPORT on Saddam Hussein during the early phases of the war in Iraq in 2003, according to GQ writer Robert Draper, who claims Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld regularly included Scripture in reports submitted to President George W. Bush

'The suggestion that Rumsfeld would have used these reports to somehow curry favor over at the White House is pretty laughable.' LAWRENCE DI RITA, former Pentagon spokesman, denying that such verses were used to appeal to the President's religious beliefs

Prison

'It doesn't make sense that our citizens should have to pay for the irresponsible behavior of others in these tough economic times.' JEFFREY MERRELL, prosecutor for Missouri's Taney County, defending a new policy of charging inmates $45 per night for room and board

'Really, it's a poor person's tax.' SEAN O'BRIEN, a professor at the University of Missouri at Kansas City's law school, saying such fees unfairly affect struggling families

LEXICON

La Costa Nostra n.--The Italian Mafia's nickname for Spain, which translates as "Our Coast"

USAGE: "Neapolitan gangsters, including the alleged fugitive boss captured Saturday night in the city of Marbella, have a name for Spain: La Costa Nostra ... The term plays off Cosa Nostra, or Our Thing, as the Mafia is called, and underscores what authorities say: that Spain has become a top base for the Naples underworld." --Los Angeles Times, May 19, 2009

For daily sound bites, visit time.com/quotes

Sources: Wall Street Journal; New York Times (2); Reuters; CNN; New York Times; CBS.com