Verbatim

"What he said was meant to scare voters, period. It was way over the top and, I think, un-American."
JOHN EDWARDS, Democratic vice-presidential candidate, reacting to Cheney's comment

"Why don't you meet Osama bin Laden, invite him to Brussels or the White House and engage in talks, ask him what he wants, and give it to him so he leaves you in peace?"
VLADIMIR PUTIN, Russian President, sarcastically rejecting calls for dialogue with Chechen separatists following the school siege that left more than 350 parents, teachers and children dead

"Call it civil war. Call it ethnic cleansing. Call it genocide ... the reality is the same. There are people in Darfur who desperately need the help of the international community."
COLIN POWELL, U.S. Secretary of State, urging the United Nations Security Council to act in war-torn Sudan

"The Americans in both countries are between two fires: if they continue they bleed to death and if they withdraw they lose everything."
AYMAN AL-ZAWAHRI, Osama bin Laden's second-in-command, in a videotaped broadcast on al-Jazeera, predicting defeat for U.S. forces in Iraq and Afghanistan

"I don't want to be known as the place that stuck him in the hospital. I'm trying to slough it all off on the Big Mac and French fries."
SCOTT MCCLARD, owner of McClard's, Bill Clinton's favorite barbecue joint in Hot Springs, Arkansas, after the former President's clogged arteries led to his hospitalization for a heart-bypass operation

"She's not a legend. She's a beginner."
LAUREN BACALL, American actress, on Nicole Kidman, her co-star in the movie Birth, after a reporter called Kidman a "legend"