Quotables

‘Everything is sort of built in a way that to me suggests intelligent design.’

Novelist Stephen King, in an interview with National Public Radio, on his belief in God. He said evidence for God was in the stars, sunrises and sunsets, and “the fact that bees pollinate all these crops and keep us alive and the way that everything seems to work together.”

‘This is just plain wrong.’

U.S. Sen. Barack Obama, D-Ill., in 2005, on the Patriot Act’s allowing the government to go on what he called “a fishing expedition through [Americans’] every personal record or private document—through library books they’ve read and phone calls they’ve made” with “no rights to appeal the need for such a search in a court of law.” As president, Obama has defended the National Security Agency’s gathering of millions of Americans’ email and phone records.

‘The only thing that would have made him happier than seeing all of you here would be if this was a fundraiser for his next campaign.’

Bonnie Lautenberg, widow of the late Sen. Frank Lautenberg, D-N.J., on how pleased he would have been to see the number of people gathered at Park Avenue Synagogue in New York for his June 5 funeral.

‘I’ve been in so many gangs around here, Mr. President, I need to get some tattoos.’

U.S. Sen. Dick Durbin, D-Ill., a member of the “Gang of Eight” working on overhauling the American immigration system and granting a path to citizenship for illegal immigrants.

‘Being polite is better than being rich.’

Mallory Crandell, daughter of Mindy Crandell, who allowed 84-year-old Gloria MacKenzie to cut in line to buy her Powerball ticket in Zephyrhills, Fla., on May 18. The widowed great-grandmother won the $590 million jackpot—the largest ever—and elected to take a $371 million lump sum payment.