Quotable & Notable

“I read the papers to find out how my health is going.”

-- A quip attributed to Pope John Paul II by Vatican spokesman Joaquín Navarro-Valls

“People spend the whole time talking about the power shortages and lack of jobs, or they talk about someone who was killed. Sometimes we try to change the subject but it’s hard.”

-- Posted to the BBC News online “Iraq election log” by “Zeina”

“ ‘Cut and run’ is just a slur by people who have no strategy. If they have their way we will be in Iraq for several years, if not decades to come.”

-- Ted Carpenter, director of foreign policy studies at the Cato Institute, who said for those who support keeping U.S. troops in Iraq, any suggestion that they be withdrawn is usually derided as “cutting and running”

“I’m not anti-death penalty. I’m anti-the wrong guy getting executed.”

-- Texas humorist, author and musician Kinky Friedman, who announced Feb. 3 his independent candidacy for the state’s governorship. He said he favors life in prison without parole as an alternative to the death penalty.

“Scrubbing public discourse of religious ideas would remove one of the main sources of social justice in our history.”

-- White House speechwriter Michael Gerson

National Catholic Reporter, February 18, 2005