Quotables

‘It’s better to die on your feet than live on your knees.’

Cuban migrant Yannio La O on reaching Miami, Fla., after a shipwreck. The number of Cuban migrants to the United States has surged to the highest level since 1994.

‘He made excuses and lied. He showed no repentance.’

South Korean prosecutors on seeking the death penalty against Lee Joon-seok, captain of the Sewol ferry that sank in April. The sinking resulted in 300 deaths.

‘He’s my other son.’

Deborah St. Laurent, mother of Donald St. Laurent, who in 2011 was accidentally killed by his roommate, Christopher Bazar. After Bazar served three years in prison for manslaughter, St. Laurent and her husband offered him a place to stay and helped him find a job.

‘If that isn’t unwarranted harassment, I don’t know what is.’

U.S. Rep. Jim Jordan, R-Ohio, on the case of Catherine Engelbrecht, who faced inquiries from the IRS, FBI, ATF, OSHA, and the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality after applying for tax-exempt status for two conservative nonprofit groups. A federal judge on Oct. 23 dismissed lawsuits by conservative groups over improper scrutiny the Internal Revenue Service admits it carried out against them.

‘Did you say a D will do?’

Former University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill employee Deborah Crowder in a 2008 email to Jan Boxill, then the academic counselor for the UNC women’s basketball team, on a grade for a paper from a student-athlete. “I’m only asking because 1, no sources, 2, it has absolutely nothing to do with the assignments for that class and 3. it seems to me to be a recycled paper,” Crowder wrote. “Yes,” Boxill responded, “a D will be fine.” A university-approved investigation found that over 18 years more than 3,100 students, almost half of whom were athletes, had received credit for non-existent “paper classes” or fraudulent independent study courses.