Quotable & Notable

“We had constructive talks.”

-- Ali Larijani, Iran’s chief nuclear negotiator after meeting with Javier Solana, the European Union foreign policy chief, about the six-nation proposal that aims at getting Iran to freeze its uranium enrichment and reprocessing program

“All they asked for was a clean government -- is that a sin?”

-- Cardinal Joseph Zen of Hong Kong, marking June 4 the 17th anniversary of the pro-democracy demonstration in Beijing’s Tiananmen Square, in which students were killed

“I don’t think the devil has much more to do today than on any other day of the year.”

-- Jan Piet of the Ambassadors Ministries, a Dutch religious group that organized a nationwide 24-hour prayer marathon on June 6 -- 06/06/06

“I don’t care what is going on in the bedroom. ... Those days are over. It is time for us to be concerned with what is going on in the kitchen.”

-- The Rev. Lennox Yearwood of Washington’s youth-oriented Hip Hop Caucus who June 5 joined other religious leaders supporting the fifth annual National Hunger Awareness Day sponsored by food pantry supplier America’s Second Harvest

“Never before in history has human procreation, and therefore the family, which is its natural place, been so threatened as in today’s culture.”

-- From the document “Family and Human Procreation,” issued June 6 by the Pontifical Council for the Family. It condemned any legal recognition of gay couples, stem cell research, in vitro fertilization, artificial insemination and artificial contraception.

National Catholic Reporter, June 16, 2006