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"While President Bush likes to project an image of strength and courage, the real truth is that in the presence of his large financial contributors, he is a moral coward." AL GORE, former Vice President, in a speech critical of Bush's environmental policies

"I used some vivid language that, if I could take it back, I'd take it back ... It's not my intention to be personally critical of the President or of anyone else." PAUL O'NEILL, former Treasury Secretary, on statements in the new book The Price of Loyalty, in which he characterized President Bush's behavior in economic-policy meetings as "a blind man in a room full of deaf people"

"The President I know is one who is fully engaged, who does ask tough questions, who pesters me all the time with questions." JOHN SNOW, O'Neill's successor as Treasury Secretary, disputing his predecessor's depiction

"I couldn't resist the voices." MIJAILO MIJAILOVIC, 25, a Swede born to Serbian parents, who confessed to killing Swedish Foreign Minister Anna Lindh

"I think it's an open question whether any adult should gamble ... It's an absolutely closed question whether a baseball player should gamble on baseball." WILLIAM BENNETT, former Secretary of Education, conservative spokesman and confessed gambler, on Pete Rose's admission that he gambled on baseball while managing the Cincinnati Reds

"Everyone told us it would be around 30° to 40°, but this is ridiculous. We have never experienced anything like this." TAMARA NEEMA, a Californian visiting New York City's Times Square, as temperatures matched a record low of 1°F set in 1893

"It's crazy. Do you realize we landed on Mars that day? Why aren't we all talking about that?" BRITNEY SPEARS, pop singer, on the attention she received after her marriage to a friend in Las Vegas was annulled after 55 hours

Sources: AP (2); Reuters; AP; New York Daily News; Reuters; New York Daily News