Verbatim

'I was in the gutter at that moment.'

SARAH FERGUSON, the Duchess of York, saying in an interview on the Oprah Winfrey Show that she had been drinking when she promised an undercover journalist access to her ex-husband, Prince Andrew, in exchange for more than $700,000

'There is a risk of developing a PlayStation mentality to killing.'

PHILIP ALSTON, an Australian U.N. investigator, referring to the Sony video-game console after calling for a halt to CIA-directed unmanned-drone strikes on suspected Islamic militants; Alston further said that "unaccountable" intelligence agencies "have no place in running programs that kill people in other countries"

'President Sirleaf put her own flesh and blood in the fight and in the line of fire.'

PREET BHARARA, U.S. attorney, announcing that Liberian President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf's son Fumbah had worked undercover with U.S. drug agents investigating a conspiracy to distribute more than $100 million worth of South American cocaine in Europe and Africa

'This is not going to be quick.'

ANTHONY CORDESMAN, of the Center for Strategic and International Studies, on negotiations to form a new Iraqi government that are expected to be protracted; Iraq's Supreme Court ratified the results of a March 7 parliamentary vote and declared a Sunni-backed secular alliance the biggest winner

'Maybe there won't be a tragedy.'

ARKADIUSZ PROTASIUK, pilot (in photo at right), in a recording recovered from the cockpit of a plane--carrying Polish President Lech Kaczynski and his wife--that crashed April 10 in Russia; everyone aboard was killed

'You can't hide the sky with your palm. The truth must come out.'

JATUPORN PROMPAN, a Thai Red Shirt leader and MP in the opposition Puea Thai party, during debates in parliament; the legislative body eventually rejected a no-confidence vote over violence that marked the end of months of Red Shirt protests

'You have the honesty of Abe Lincoln and the charm of the guy who shot him.'

DANE COOK, comedian, paying tribute to departing American Idol judge Simon Cowell, who left the show after its ninth-season finale on May 26

TALKING HEADS

Elizabeth Rosenthal

Lamenting that science has failed to offer a solution to the Gulf of Mexico oil leak, in the New York Times:

"Americans have long had an unswerving belief that technology will save us--it is the cavalry coming over the hill, just as we are about to lose the battle. And yet, as Americans watched scientists struggle to plug the undersea well over the past month, it became apparent that our great belief in technology was perhaps misplaced."

--5/28/10

General Colin Powell

On the possible repeal of "Don't ask, don't tell," which he helped implement in 1993, on ABC's This Week: