‘These will be the strongest sanctions in history.’

U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, announcing a “string of sanctions” the United States will impose on Iran if the Iranian regime doesn’t end aggressive actions in the region and abandon nuclear fuel programs, among other demands. “The regime has been fighting all over the Middle East for years. After our sanctions come in force, it will be battling to keep its economy alive.”

‘I self-identify as a woman on Wednesdays, between 6:50 a.m. when my alarm goes off and around midnight when I go to bed.’

David Lewis, a member of the Labour Party in the United Kingdom, who is running for election as a women’s officer, a post that party rules say can only be held by a woman. Lewis said he expected the party to decline his application to run, but party rules allow candidates to self-identify their gender. He says he wants to show “what happens when you say that someone’s gender depends only on what they say and nothing else.”

‘It has been nearly 50 years since an operations officer rose up through the ranks to become the director, and after the experience of the last two months, I think I know why that is.’

New CIA Director Gina Haspel on contentious confirmation hearings that focused on her role in overseeing interrogations that included waterboarding.

‘We did not feel [that] any of the books we read this year incited the level of unanimous laughter we have come to expect.

Publisher David Campbell, a judge for the Bollinger Everyman Wodehouse Prize, announcing that the British comedy prize would not go to any of the 62 novels submitted.

‘This government has been in power for 18 years and things have gone from bad to worse.’

Engineering student Jorge Hernandez on Venezuela’s socialist regime and the economic collapse it brought about in the country.