Quotables

"We are friends with the Americans, the Anglo-Saxons, but it's economic war."

French lawmaker Pierre Lasbordes on advice from French defense experts that government agencies avoid BlackBerry use. They fear that U.S. intelligence agencies might snoop on e-mail messages.

"It was like a 30-foot tornado of flames."

Mark Hilton of Orangeburg, S.C., on the collapse of a furniture store roof during a June 18 fire in Charleston, S.C., that killed nine firefighters.

"We just had to sit like sardines in a can."

Traveler Jocelyn Ashberg of Capetown, South Africa, on being stranded on the tarmac in Chicago on June 20 after a United Airways computer malfunction halted all departures for two hours.

"The annulment process was allowing us to cop out of taking any responsibility for the choices we made. It wasn't that God didn't bless the union. To put if off on God I didn't feel was valid."

Sheila Rauch Kennedy, wife of former U.S. Rep. Joseph Kennedy II from 1979 to 1991 and mother of his two children, on her decade-long fight against the annulment of her marriage that the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Boston granted to Rep. Kennedy. She said last week that Rome had overturned the annulment.