Quotables

"We've actually lived the last 30 years in this country off the next 30, and the bill's due."

U.S. Sen. Tom Coburn, R-Okla., and author of The Debt Bomb, on the national debt.

"Hate to say it but I don't believe polls showing majority support for gay marriage nationally. Any time there's a vote it doesn't back it up."

Tom Jensen of the left-leaning polling firm Public Policy Polling in a tweet after an amendment defining marriage as between a man and a woman passed on May 8 in North Carolina by a 22-point margin. The margin was larger than polls from Public Policy Polling and other groups had predicted.

"I'm told that her tribal name is Tells Tall Tales."

Commentator and columnist Charles Krauthammer on U.S. Senate candidate Elizabeth Warren, who for years claimed minority status as a law school professor on the basis of unproven "family lore" about a great-great-great grandmother who was Cherokee Indian. Warren is challenging U.S. Sen. Scott Brown, R-Mass.

"The fact that a false, misleading smear campaign can destroy a company's reputation overnight should disturb us all."

Gov. Terry Branstad, R-Iowa, on an announcement by Beef Products Inc. that it will close processing plants in Waterloo, Iowa; Garden City, Kan.; and Amarillo, Texas, on May 25 after controversy erupted over its beef product called "pink slime" by critics.

"$86.9 million"

The selling price for Mark Rothko's 1961 painting "Orange, Red, Yellow" during a May 8 auction at Christie's in New York. The price was a record for a work of contemporary art.