Quotes of the Day

Messing With Texas
Dennis Quaid remembers the Alamo. "I used to play the Battle of San Jacinto as a kid," says the Houston-born star, above center, with Spanish actor JORDI MOLLA, right. Quaid, with the aid of some happenin' muttonchops and the largest standing movie set in North America (50-plus acres), plays General Sam Houston in The Alamo, due out Christmas Day. Directed by fellow Texan John Lee Hancock, who teamed up with Quaid in 2002's The Rookie, this account of the Lone Star State's battle for independence from Mexico shares little with the 1960 John Wayne film of the same name. It depicts the Mexicans' view of events and the faults of heroes like Houston, forcing Quaid to relearn his Texas history. Not that he minded. "This was like being a kid again," Quaid says, "only they gave you really great toys to play with."

Who's The Boss?
Bruce Springsteen rubbed some men in blue raw at his tour-closing concerts at New York City's Shea Stadium. It was when he performed American Skin (41 Shots), his song about the 1999 killing of West African immigrant Amadou Diallo by four police officers. The N.Y.P.D. yanked his escort for the next few nights, claiming it had been, after all, only a courtesy. Springsteen didn't sing Skin in his next two outings, and — presto!--his police detail was restored. Did the champion of the workingman back down? Maybe he just appreciated anew the lyrics of his song Thunder Road: "The door's open, but the ride it ain't free."

Battle Of The Foot-In-Mouths
The State Department raged last week that Pat Robertson had suggested nuking its HQ. Did he, or didn't he? It's a close call as to who has said the darndest things lately — the Rev. or preacher's daughter Jessica Simpson, star of this season's required reality viewing, MTV's Newlyweds.

JESSICA SIMPSON ON BUFFALO WINGS: "I don't eat buffalo ... It's not? Then why are they called buffalo wings?"

ON OTHER FOOD: "Is this chicken, what I have, or is this fish? I know it's tuna, but it says 'Chicken by [sic] the Sea.'"

ON WHAT COMES AFTER DEATH: "Rigor who?"

THE REV. PAT ROBERTSON ON LIBERIA'S CHARLES TAYLOR (WHO LATER FLED THE COUNTRY WITH MILLIONS OF DOLLARS): "So we're undermining a Christian, Baptist President to bring in Muslim rebels to take over the country?"

ON HIS "PRAYER OFFENSIVE" TO GET RID OF LIBERAL SUPREMES: "One justice is 83 years old, another has cancer and another has a heart condition. Is it not possible for God to put it in the minds of these three judges that the time has come to retire?"

AND ABOUT THAT STATE DEPARTMENT: "When you get through [a recent book on U.S. diplomacy], you say, 'If I could just get a nuclear device inside Foggy Bottom, I think that's the answer...'"

A Boy's Novel Fantasy
Christopher Paolini is just like any other kid: he wrote a medieval fantasy novel full of dragons, dwarfs and Old Norse at 17, his homeschooler parents self-published it, and novelist Carl Hiaasen's young stepson read the book while fly-fishing. But then things took an odd turn. Hiaasen's publisher Knopf bought Eragon, as the book is titled, and Paolini's next two for six figures. Now Eragon is outselling four of the five Harry Potter books. Paolini, 19, may go on to college or, he says, "take a vacation." That is, if he can find a place where they speak Old Norse.

• Ellin Martens