QUOTES OF THE WEEK
Abortion will “no longer be an article for the constitution”... It would then be “safe, legal and rare”. Taoiseach Leo Varadkar gives his views on the forthcoming referendum.
“This is a family, not a cartel.” Liam Byrne, a friend of the Hutch family who knew the murdered Derek Coakley Hutch well, said everyone was stunned he had been killed. In an address on behalf of the family at Derek’s funeral, he spoke of the deceased as “an absolute gentleman” who revelled in practical jokes.
“What we’re doing now is doing the job that the British people asked the Government to do, which is to deliver on Brexit. They want us to do that. But in doing that, they did not vote for nothing to change when we come out of the EU.” British Prime Minister Theresa May.
“There has never been a better time to start living the American dream.” US President Donald Trump in his State of the Union address.
“An idiot savant who plays the rolling ocean of Twitter like a blubbernecked sea lion.” The New York Times’s opinion of President Trump.
“The naughtiest man I have ever worked with.” Dame Judi Dench’s verdict on fellow actor Geoffrey Palmer.
“I’m hoping to write a pantomime. I shall call it Transgenderella. I don’t know whether the glass slipper will fit a male or female foot.” Writer Jilly Cooper.
“BBC management need to stop treating us as some kind of enemy. They are stumbling towards a Greek tragedy where they make happen their own worst fears. They need to stop now, pull up and trust their staff.” Carrie Gracie, who quit as the BBC’s China editor over the gender pay row.
“I don’t believe there is an old boys’ network, I believe in equality of opportunity.” BBC director-general Tony Hall, denying accusations about the Corporation’s attitude towards equal pay.
The world is always saying to us, if you just buy that designer label pair of jeans, or if you wore that expensive perfume, or if you drove a fast car, or if you got that cosmetic surgery, oh, well then you would be happy, then you would be fulfilled. But none of it works. Or perhaps, to be more accurate, it works just enough to get you addicted. Sometimes I think... we have just become a nation of junkies hooked on the idea that you can find fulfilment from these things.” The Bishop of Chelmsford, the Rt Rev Stephen Cottrell.
“I don’t get chased down the street. Nor has anyone thrown their underwear at me.” Actor Colin Firth on his supposed sex appeal.
“I do, she was an absolute genius.” Poet Pam Ayres responds to a questioner who asked “who remembers Pam Ayres?”
“You can do anything in your wildest dreams if you just create your own luck.” Singer-songwriter Paloma Faith.