Quotables

"I couldn't care less."

Author Doris Lessing, 88, receiving the news that she won this year's Nobel Prize for literature. "I've won all the prizes in Europe, every bloody one," she said, "so I'm delighted to win them all, the whole lot, OK?"

"Basically what Al Gore and the global-warming crusade want to do is put an energy starved planet on a diet and this is a recipe for poverty. And poverty does not lead to peace. It leads to conflict."

Marlo Lewis, senior fellow at the Competitive Enterprise Institute, on the Nobel Peace Prize going to Al Gore for his anti-global-warming campaign.

"We can still teach the kids and love the kids in a Christ-like way without having to talk about Christ."

Christian White, interim principal of one of eight Washington, D.C., Catholic schools that is moving to convert to a publicly funded charter school. The conversions mean the schools must drop all religious instruction. Funding woes forced the Washington archdiocese either to shut the schools or go public.

"I turned on the light and screamed. It still makes my heart race."

Nadege Brunacci of New York City on finding a 7-foot-long python in her toilet on Oct. 15.