Verbatim

'Everyone should have the right to marry the person that they love.'

BARBARA BUSH, daughter of former President George W. Bush, expressing her support for marriage equality in a video spot for the Human Rights Campaign; her father is opposed to the legalization of same-sex marriage

'This is going to muck up my Everest trip.'

ADAM POTTER, a Scottish climber, on what he was thinking when he fell 1,000 ft. (305 m) from a mountain in Scotland; he suffered only minor injuries and plans to summit Mount Everest

'I wanted to create a whimsical, surreal experience.'

NICHOLAS HARRINGTON, a 16-year-old boy who admitted to putting a grand piano on a sandbar in Miami's Biscayne Bay; Harrington and his father filmed the process for a video that the teen plans to submit as part of his art-school application

'It's a legal product. I choose to smoke. Leave me alone.'

JOHN BOEHNER, Speaker of the House, after being asked about his cigarette habit

'We're going to take over a TV station and a radio channel and try and take over power at key centers.'

CHRIS KNIGHT, a former professor in Britain and now an avowed anarchist, saying that he and hundreds of others will use smoke bombs, roadblocks and other diversions to cause chaos at Prince William and Kate Middleton's April 29 wedding

'You were strung out on crack.'

CAROL MOSELEY BRAUN, former U.S. Senator and a candidate for Chicago mayor, responding at a forum to opponent Patricia Van Pelt Watkins's charge that Braun had been "missing in action" from the city; Watkins has admitted to using marijuana and cocaine as a teenager but not since. Braun later apologized

'There were points in my life where I felt oddly irresistible to women. I'm not in that state now.'

JACK NICHOLSON, actor, 73, expressing sadness about his age

TALKING HEADS

Larry Downes

Explaining why it's pointless for governments to regulate the Internet, on Slate:

"While politicians and self-appointed consumer advocates opportunistically decry anarchy on the digital borderlands, those of us who reside there know it runs a hell of a lot better than anyplace else we've lived. Digital life has its own norms and values, enforced by efficient and effective engineering ... Even if the Internet really does need saving, however, the most useful thing for traditional regulators to do would be nothing."

--1/28/11

Gary Younge

Commenting on the disconnect between how the U.S. regards its soldiers and how it regards its wars, in the Guardian:

"There is a reverence for the military in the U.S. on a scale rarely seen anywhere else in the West ... [But] when Pew surveyed public interest in the war over an 18-week period last year, fewer than 1 in 10 said it was the top news story they were following in any given week ... The country, it seems, has moved on. The trouble is, the troops are still there."

--1/30/11

William Kristol