If God got her through the tornado, he'll get her through life.

Kandi Weaver, paternal grandmother of 5-year-old Ashley Himes, the sole survivor in a Florida mobile home destroyed by tornadoes late last month. Ashley's mother, her mother's fiancé, and her mother's parents died in the twister. She left the hospital last week with her 22-year-old father, with whom she's never lived.

The defendant wants to use his body parts as a bargaining chip.

Illinois judge Donald Hudson, rejecting the plea for a lighter sentence for a convicted pedophile who had himself surgically castrated. The pedophile had sought a six-year sentence; the judge gave him 26.

You just became eligible for a court-appointed lawyer. Congratulations!

Federal Magistrate Carl Horn to one of the eight arrested in Charlotte, N.C., for last year's $17 million armored car heist. The judge had just informed the suspect, Stephen Chambers, that the FBI had seized his only other asset, a mobile home.

You just use what you have.

John Hawkins, who survived a cold night in a California forest by lining his sweater with ripped-out pages of Chrysler chairman Lee Iacocca's autobiography.

They act like animals.... It's time to treat them like animals.

Oklahoma state Sen. Frank Shurden,\arguing for a bill to allow judges to order castration in extreme cases of sexual assault, such as the rape of a child under 14, or in a case that is otherwise "serious, atrocious, or cruel."

The big story has to be in a kind of renewal in public faith in government.

Vice presidential aide Elaine C. Kamarck, on the fifth anniversary last week of Al Gore's "reinventing government" initiative. Ms. Kamarck suggested the initiative will be recast from down-sizing and reforming bureaucracy to upsizing and rebuilding confidence in federal power.