Monday, Jun. 02, 2003

Verbatim

"The building shook like a ship. I sheltered with my daughters in a doorframe. That's why we're still alive." FATMA FERHANI, resident of the town of Rouiba, Algeria, near the epicenter of an earthquake that killed more than 1,600

"Prime Minister Sharon accepted the road map, and that's progress." GEORGE W. BUSH, announcing that the Israeli leader has agreed to endorse the latest U.S. plan for peace

"The war that we did not want ... has taken place. We cannot undo history. We are now in a situation where we must take action for the sake of the Iraqi people." GUNTER PLEUGER, German ambassador to the U.N., after the Security Council voted to lift sanctions on Iraq

"I've climbed as high as I can, and it's worth every step of it." ANNIKA SORENSTAM, first female golfer to play in a men's PGA Tour event since 1945, after failing to make the cut after two rounds at the Colonial

"I fooled some of the most brilliant people in journalism." JAYSON BLAIR, former New York Times reporter, who resigned from the newspaper after the discovery of numerous mistakes and fabrications in stories he had written

"This is the kind of job when you come home at the end of the day, you really like to have someone to sound off to, and the plants just weren't doing it for me." CHRISTIE WHITMAN, who resigned as head of the EPA, saying she wanted to spend more time with her husband in New Jersey

"Could somebody have a husband and a woman partner at the same time and be a Christian? ... I doubt that very seriously." DONALD WILDMON, Fundamentalist minister, protesting the appointment of Patricia Ireland, the former president of the National Organization for Women who lived with a woman while remaining married, as head of the YWCA

Sources: AP; New York Times (3); New York Observer; New York Times (2)