Quotables

"Effectively dead."

Retired Coast Guard Adm. Thad Allen, the federal government's point man on the BP oil spill disaster, announcing that the blown-out oil well in the Gulf of Mexico has finally been killed once and for all, five months after an explosion sank a drilling rig and led to the worst offshore oil spill in U.S. history.

"There is no more Molly."

Seattle Weekly editor-in-chief Mark D. FeFer, in a Sept. 15 column explaining why work by cartoonist Molly Norris will no longer appear in local papers. FBI agents warned Norris to change her identity because of Islamic death threats following her "Everybody Draw Mohammed Day" cartoon. Fefer said Norris likens her situation to cancer-"it might basically be nothing, it might be urgent and serious, it might go away and never return, or it might pop up again when she least expects it," and added, "We're hoping the religious bigots go into full and immediate remission, and we wish her the best."

"If I come as an immigrant, you have the obligation to make me a citizen."

Zeituni Onyango, President Obama's aunt, who came to the United States from Kenya in 2000 and lived here illegally until a judge granted her asylum in May. Onyango, who wishes to become a U.S. citizen, lives in public housing and receives $700 per month in disability payments.

"Who doesn't regret the '80s to some extent?"

Delaware Republican Senate candidate Christine O'Donnell, on her past statements, such as that she dabbled in witchcraft as a teenager.

"We ask you to explain what you want from us, what we should try to publish or not publish, so we know what to expect."

A statement in a front-page editorial for the Mexican newspaper El Diario de Juarez, seeking peace with local drug cartels after the killing of two of the paper's journalists in two years.

"The first magazine he reads each week is People."

Jim Manley, spokesman for Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, explaining that his boss is "very conversant in pop culture" and thus welcomes Lady Gaga's support for repeal of the military's "Don't ask, don't tell" policy.