Verbatim

'I wish they caught me six years ago, eight years ago.'

BERNIE MADOFF, jailed financier and Ponzi schemer, in a newly released interview with representatives of the Securities and Exchange Commission, which was part of an investigation into the SEC's failure to uncover Madoff's scam for 16 years

'Food-stamp beneficiaries aren't them--they're us.'

JAMES WEILL, president of the Food Research and Action Center, on an analysis of 30 years of data that found nearly half of all U.S. children and 90% of black youths will have to depend on food stamps at some point in their childhoods

'Nothing fell off.'

TOIVO ILVONEN, project manager for the world's largest cruise ship, Oasis of the Seas, which had to lower its smokestacks to squeeze under a bridge on its maiden voyage to its home port

'This is all happening because my father didn't buy me a train set as a kid.'

WARREN BUFFETT, investor, on his company's $26 billion purchase of Burlington Northern Santa Fe railroad--its biggest deal ever and one Buffett calls an "all-in wager" on the U.S. economy

'After all these years, I still don't get how Broadway works.'

NEIL SIMON, American playwright, after a revival of his play Brighton Beach Memoirs closed a week after it opened

'I went to sleep as Rihanna and woke up as Britney Spears.'

RIHANNA, pop singer, on the unprecedented levels of media attention she endured after she was assaulted by former boyfriend Chris Brown in February

'She said I had to make a photograph in front of this and send it to her to make sure it was true.'

BILL CLINTON, on his wife Secretary of State Hillary Clinton's response to an 11-ft. (3.6 m) bronze statue of the former U.S. President unveiled in Pristina, Kosovo, on Nov. 1. It honors his role in pushing for NATO intervention in 1999, which stopped Serb forces' crackdown on independence-seeking ethnic Albanians

BACK & FORTH

Sports

'Nothing against Keflezighi, but he's like a ringer who you hire to work a couple hours at your office so that you can win the executive softball league.'

DARREN ROVELL, a CNBC sports reporter, on Eritrean-born runner Meb Keflezighi, hailed as the first American to win the New York City Marathon in 27 years

'I've been here 22 years. And the U.S.A. is a land of immigrants.'

KEFLEZIGHI, dismissing complaints that he is not a real American because he wasn't born in the country. He has been a U.S. citizen since 1998

Nationalism

'What is French?'

WEBSITE of France's Ministry of Immigration and National Identity, asking citizens to share thoughts on patriotism, national values and the growing number of minorities entering the country

'I think it will be sad if the government tells you how to be French. I worry about authoritarianism hidden behind debates on identity.'

PAP NDIAYE, associate professor at France's School for Advanced Studies in Social Science, criticizing the site

LEXICON

Virtopsies n.--Autopsies that use noninvasive body scans and 3-D imaging