Verbatim

"The audacity of the schemes, the scale of the waste--it is just breathtaking."

SUSAN COLLINS, Republican Senator from Maine, on reports estimating that up to $2 billion in post-Katrina aid was misused

"I don't think it'll look as dramatic as New Orleans, but when it's your house ..."

DON MAURER, New York State emergency management office spokesman, on massive flooding on the East Coast last week that forced more than 200,000 to evacuate and caused at least 16 deaths

"Berkeley has always had a foreign policy, the national one notwithstanding."

ALBERT SUKOFF, resident of Berkeley, Calif., after the city council agreed to put to voters a symbolic measure calling for the impeachment of President Bush and Vice President Cheney because of Iraq

"We need to have a better definition of what constitutes work."

MIKE LEAVITT, Health and Human Services Secretary, after the Bush Administration, in an effort to reduce welfare rolls, tightened rules that had in some cases allowed bed rest to qualify as work. Leavitt said many families "are not being challenged to find work"

"Don't say, 'I want to sleep.' Get up and vote."

ROLA DASHTI, economist and candidate in Kuwait's parliamentary elections last week, urging women to cast ballots in the first poll in which they were allowed to run or vote. No woman was elected

"If we can just go back to our lives pre-Fluffgate, we'll be fine."

KATHI-ANNE REINSTEIN, Massachusetts state representative, after the withdrawal of a controversial proposal by state senator Jarrett Barrios to restrict the serving of Fluffernutters--marshmallow and peanut-butter sandwiches--in elementary schools

For more daily sound bites, visit time.com/quotes

Sources: New York Times (2); Reuters; AP; Washington Post; New York Times