This Week They Said

I'm not going to walk off the pitch. I'm going to see that through. I want to be Minister for Health

I'm not going to walk off the pitch. I'm going to see that through. I want to be Minister for Health. - Minister for Health, Mary Harney, says she will not resign over serious failings in the treatment of cancer patients at the Midland Regional Hospital in Portlaoise.

Ireland is just loveless at the moment.

- An anonymous Dublin trader as more than €3.5 billion is wiped off the value of Irish shares in a single day.

[I] will definitely be there until 2011 or 2012.

READ MORE

- The Taoiseach Mr Ahern says he will stay in office until the next general election.

They get our oil and give us a worthless piece of paper.

- Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, president of Iran, wonders why the world continues to trade oil in US dollars. The currency has fallen sharply in value in recent weeks.

These people who have lots of money, they're either snobby or they're stingy.

- Speaking in Dublin, Heather Mills McCartney passes judgment on the super-rich.

How is eating a whale different from eating pigs or cows?

- Keiji Fujino, a whale butcher in the Japanese port of Shimonoseki.

It was unprecedented - absolutely amazing. The sea was red with these jellyfish and there was nothing we could do.

- John Russell, of Northern Salmon Company, on a jellyfish attack that killed more than 100,000 salmon in Glenarm Bay, Co Antrim.

It's unlikely that censorship or the Gulag will be brought back in the near future. They are not needed.

- Sergei Kovalyev, a Russian human rights activist and former Gulag inmate. His country has, he says, become a "totalitarian" state.

Seeing these guys go at a 20lb turkey is like poetry.

- George Shea of the US-based International Federation of Competitive Eating ahead of its annual turkey-eating competition.

You wouldn't want to swat one of those.

Paleontologist Simon Brady after scientists discover the partial remains of an ancient sea scorpion. It is believed the creature, at eight feet long, was one of the largest ever non-vertebrates.

I thought maybe I would tell it to Caroline when I met her someday.

- Neil Diamond explains why he's waited until now to reveal that the song Sweet Carolinewas inspired by the daughter of the former US president Kennedy.

When will politicians realise that George Orwell's 1984was a warning, not an instruction manual?

- Derek Clark, a British MEP, comments on a proposed law to quiz women about their sexual history to improve census data.

I think opportunities were lost.

- Dr Thomas Treasure, a British surgeon at the inquest into the death of Princess Diana. He suggested she might have been saved had French medics brought her to hospital sooner.

I feel happy, but my happiness is not complete. We need more people to come back. We need more people to feel safe.

- Suhaila Al-Aasan, who returned to her home in Baghdad to find the apartment building was otherwise deserted.