Quotable & Notable

“No estate tax for families with at least two U.S. presidents”

-- No. 10 of the “Top 10 Bush Tax Proposals” as read by John Kerry on “The Late Show with David Letterman.”

“It made me really sad to think that to get into corporate America I’d have to conform.”

-- Rebecca Gamsby reacting to career advice that she hide her tattoos and remove rings from her eyebrow and navel and metal bar from her tongue if she wanted a job, from a Christian Science Monitor story about workplace dress codes. In the end, she didn’t have to remove the hardware because the public relations firm that hired her liked her “quirkiness.”

“It’s worse than you think.”

-- Headline of the Newsweek story that reports the insurgency in Iraq is spreading. The Defense Department counted 87 attacks per day on U.S. forces in August and 7,245 wounded U.S. soldiers as of Sept. 12.

“All these factors create apprehension in the market and reinforce the view that we’re on a knife’s edge in terms of supply and demand.”

-- Daniel Hynes, oil industry analyst at ANZ Bank in Melbourne, Australia, commenting on growing concerns over militancy in Nigeria, OPEC’s fifth-largest producer, that are compounding worries about supply security in Russia, Saudi Arabia and Iraq as the price of oil edged toward $50 a barrel, a 21 year high.

“Everything is a sign that life is fragile, and we need to help each other.”

-- Fr. Stephen Conserva of Miramar, Fla., replying to a local journalist who asked if the hurricanes that have hit the state over the last month were a sign from God.

National Catholic Reporter, October 8, 2004