Verbatim

"Instead of losing thousands of lives, we might lose tens of thousands or even hundreds of thousands of lives in a single day of war." VICE PRESIDENT DICK CHENEY, defending the war in Iraq as a crucial step in preventing future terrorist attacks

"The record can show that I constantly rejected any participation in 9/11 ... I was part of a different operation, with different al-Qaeda member and target." ZACARIAS MOUSSAOUI, the only person charged in a U.S. court in connection with the Sept. 11 attacks, in a motion written in January and made public last week

"If his eyes had been lasers, mine would have been burned out." ZACH WAMP, Republican Congressman of Tennessee, after President Bush asked him to back off a proposal that would have required Iraq to repay $10 billion in aid. Wamp backed off

"This reaffirms what we already know, that this was not about one man's compensation but about a culture gone awry." PHIL ANGELIDES, California treasurer, on the disclosure that co-presidents of the New York Stock Exchange are each entitled to $22 million upon retirement. Former N.Y.S.E . chairman Richard Grasso resigned last month after it was revealed that his compensation package totaled $187.5 million

"It's a late-blooming insanity, if there is one." ROBERT HORAN JR., government prosecutor in the D.C.-area sniper case, on the announcement that 18-year-old suspect Lee Boyd Malvo's lawyers plan to use an insanity defense

"Now the children will not leave the house. They just sit at home all day watching satellite TV." LAMIA YOUNIS, mother of four, on electric power's being restored with greater reliability and frequency across Iraq

"I'm flattered. And of course, I'm also entertained by the fact that they seem to ignore the reality that I lost." JOHN MCCAIN, Republican Senator from Arizona, noting that his 2000 presidential campaign is often looked to as a model by the current Democratic presidential candidates

Sources: CNN; AP; CNN; New York Times; Washington Post; USA Today; New York Times