Quotables

"I came to get a divorce."

Ten-year-old Nujood Ali to a Yemeni judge after her parents married her off to a man more than three times her age. Nujood's plight made international news, but her "husband" agreed to the divorce only after a lawyer offered him $250.

"I've always been pro-choice, and all of a sudden I'm here not sleeping at night about killing a coat."

Paola Antonelli, curator at New York City's Museum of Modern Art, on her decision to kill the museum's "Victimless Leather" exhibit, a tiny jacket made up of embryonic stem cells taken from mice. Five weeks into the exhibit, the jacket had grown too large for its incubation system, prompting Antonelli's decision.

"We have rivers that have been at flood stage since March."

Susie Stoner of the Missouri State Emergency Management Agency on the effects of high rainfall this year. Flooding threatened numerous communities throughout the Plains states and Midwest last week.

"Freedom of speech is an American concept, so I don't give it any value."

Dean Steacy, investigator for the Canadian Human Rights Commission, during a hearing earlier this year. The commission this month heard a case against journalist Mark Steyn over an article that Muslim complainants said offended them.

"When Kansas goes Democratic in a presidential election is when hell will go Methodist."

Mel Kahn, professor of political science at Wichita State University, on the unlikelihood of Barack Obama carrying Kansas, even though Gov. Kathleen Sebelius is often mentioned as his potential running mate.

"They were traumatized, but we wanted them to be traumatized."

Lori Tauber, guidance counselor at El Camino High School in Oceanside, Calif., on a controversial anti-drunk driving exercise last month in which school officials falsely told students that several fellow students had been killed in a car wreck.