Verbatim
'He has deliberately destroyed education.' RAYMOND MAJONGWE, of the Progressive Teachers' Union of Zimbabwe, after President Robert Mugabe canceled the rest of the school year, citing violence and hyperinflation
'This system was designed for plain vanilla loans, and we were trying to push chocolate sundaes through the gears.' MARC GOTT, former director in Fannie Mae's loan-servicing department, explaining the company's collapse
'I myself am not that happy. It's a noisy celebration.' TOSHIHIDE MASKAWA, Japanese scientist, on winning the 2008 Nobel Prize in Physics
'It always comes down to a knife fight in a telephone booth.' CHRIS LEHANE, Democratic political consultant, on the inevitability of negative attacks at the end of presidential campaigns
'For the first time in a decade, there are economies in Latin America that are doing better than in rich countries.' AUGUSTO DE LA TORRE, chief economist at the World Bank, on why fewer Latin Americans are immigrating to the U.S.
'If only I could feed him a potion and make him young again.' MONICA XANGATHI, Johannesburg resident, reminiscing about former leader Nelson Mandela as poverty and political strife continue to worsen in South Africa
'My parents shut down Disneyland for me, so I'm good for a while.' MILEY CYRUS, tween idol, on what she'd like for her sweet 16 after her parents threw her a birthday party at the famous theme park
Back & Forth:
Afghanistan
'We don't have the kind of hard, direct evidence that you could take to get a criminal indictment. That allows Karzai to say, Where's your proof?' WHITE HOUSE OFFICIAL, speaking anonymously on suspicions that the brother of Afghan President Hamid Karzai is involved in heroin trafficking
'I am not a drug dealer, I never was, and I never will be. I am a victim of vicious politics.' AHMED KARZAI (above), accusing U.S. officials of fabricating allegations to harm his brother
Iraq
'They told us we don't have a place in our government, and we don't know why.' THAIR AL-SHEEKH, priest at Sacred Heart Church in Baghdad, after the Iraqi parliament scrapped a provision in the country's election law that guarantees seats for Iraqi Christians
'There is an effort to come up with an appendix regarding the minorities later on.' NASSER AL-ANI, Iraq's presidential-council spokesman, saying such a provision is difficult to implement given the nation's lack of census data
LEXICON
Mail Goggles n.--A new Gmail feature that uses simple math equations to prevent users from sending e-mails while drunk
USAGE: "You can set up Mail Goggles to protect you from yourself at other emotionally vulnerable times--before your morning coffee, for example, or right after Grey's Anatomy." --Associated Press, Oct. 7, 2008
For daily sound bites, visit time.com/quotes
Sources: Times of London; New York Times; Reuters; New York Times (3); AP