“But this is happening right here in Milan?”
Spectator watching a skyscraper burn after a pilot crashed a small plane into its side, killing at least three people in an eerie echo of September 11

“In terms of solid evidence, there wasn’t any. There isn’t now.”
U.S. Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, on reports that Osama bin Laden was at Tora Bora when U.S. forces began their assault there in December

“We saw children looking for their parents. We saw fathers, brothers, sisters digging in the rubble in order to find the corpses of their dear ones.”
U. N. envoy Terje Roed-Larsen, on visiting the destroyed Palestinian refugee camp in Jenin

“I mean, it’s not like you’re going to walk around with this thing on, are you?”
Tiger Woods, on why his third Masters green jacket will stay in the back of his closet

“What did this administration know and when did it know it, about the events of September 11th?.. What do they have to hide?”
U.S. Congresswoman CYNTHIA MCKINNEY
who wants to investigate whether President George W. Bush had prior knowledge of the terrorist attacks

“And so, in my State of the, my State of the Union, or state, my speech to the nation, whatever you want to call it, speech to the nation, I asked Americans to give 4,000 years, 4,000 hours over the next, the rest of your life, of service to America.”
President BUSH,
on his community-service initiative

“This is not just terror. This is a massacre.”
Israeli Public Security Minister UZI Landau
on the Wednesday suicide bombing that killed 22 Israelis as they celebrated Passover

“What nonsense I have just come out with.”
Spanish Prime Minister JOSE MARIA AZNAR
unaware his microphone was still on, referring to a 25-minute speech he had just given to the European Parliament

“I cannot go back in the camp. If officers kill me, if police kill me, good, but don’t send me into the camp. ”
A 20-year-old Afghan asylum seeker who, along with others, escaped from a detention center in Woomera, Australia

“She was not merely an historical figure. She was history.”
LORD ST. JOHN OF FAWSLEY
on the death of Britain’s Queen Mother

“How can a guy get through a tiny window at the criminal brigade in Paris when here, if they pick up some bloke who’s just nicked a bicycle, he’s automatically in handcuffs?”
JEAN LEBOIN
from Nanterre, France, where a man fatally shot eight local-government officials, then leap to his death while being interrogated by police last Wednesday

“I want to be a martyr; martyr, martyr, martyr.”
Palestinian leader YASIR ARAFAT
on Israeli troops storming his compound in Ramallah

“May God bless our coalition”
U.S. President GEORGE W. BUSH
ending a speech to more than 150 diplomats on March 11. The quote was widely interpreted by the European press as an effort to strengthen an increasingly divided coalition against terror. Notably, the mainstream U.S. press barely took note of the quote.

“Inmates of the [concentration] camps had numbers tattooed on their bodies. How can Jews do something comparable to their own prisoners?”
British M.P. GERALD KAUFMAN
on Israeli troop’s putting identification numbers on the foreheads and forearms of Palestinian captives

“We had words. I couldn’t believe he’d go to [the Muslim world] after 9-11. He said, ‘Mom, I’ll be safe.”
SHERRY AUDE
whose son, Erike Aude, 21, was apprehended at the Islamabad airport for having eight pounds of raw opium in his suitcase. His mother says he is innocent and was duped by a man who hired him as a courier to transport leather goods.