Quotables

"They needed a little happy talk."

Michigan political analyst Bill Ballenger on the state's voters giving Mitt Romney a victory in the Jan. 15 Michigan primary. With Michigan's economy reeling, Ballenger said John McCain hurt his campaign by telling voters that lost auto industry jobs would not return.

"I am not physically able to speak directly to the citizens."

Ailing Cuban dictator Fidel Castro, in a Jan. 16 article published by state media indicating he was not healthy enough to address Cubans in person.

"It was time to shake things up in the life of Peter Parker."

Joe Quesada, editor-in-chief of Marvel Comics, on the decision to end the marriage of Spider-Man and Mary Jane.

"Fathers are not supposed to be murdered at their daughters' basketball games."

Salon editor-in-chief Joan Walsh, after Terrell Rogers, father of nationally ranked high-school basketball star Tierra Rogers, was gunned down across the street during his daughter's game in San Francisco.

"It's war now."

Richard D. Emery, lawyer for former Roger Clemens trainer Brian McNamee, after Clemens filed a lawsuit accusing McNamee of defamation for saying he had injected Clemens with steroids and after Clemens made public a tape of a secretly recorded phone call from the trainer, who called Clemens to ask him to encourage his ailing 10-year-old son.

"I am a lucky man. I have had a dream and it has come true, and that is not a thing that happens often to men."

Sir Edmund Hillary, who died Jan. 11 at age 88. Along with guide Tenzing Norgay, Hillary became the first person to climb Mount Everest, the world's tallest peak, in 1953.