Verbatim

"I've got a doc with me 24 hours a day who watches me carefully. There's one outside there now." DICK CHENEY, Vice President, trying to allay concerns about his health, after announcing he would be Bush's running mate in 2004

"The cost difference between a Viking per hour and Marine One per hour is $7 per hour." ARI FLEISCHER, White House spokesman, responding to complaints that Bush had wasted government money by arriving on the carrier Abraham Lincoln in a Navy jet, Top Gun--style, instead of in a helicopter, for a photo op with U.S. troops

"This weather has put the coffin nail in this little town, and Nature just won't let us go in peace." BILL SHEPHERD, on devastation in Pierce City, Mo., which was nearly destroyed by tornadoes last week

"I'm surprised at the day-in and day-out steady level of malfeasance that comes in under the radar." WILLIAM DONALDSON, Securities and Exchange Commission Chairman, after his first 12 weeks on the job

"I have believed in the entire philosophies of the left at one period in my life, including socialism, communism, Trotskyism. All isms have influenced me one way or another." LANGSTON HUGHES, writer, during a closed-door inquiry in 1953 before Senator Joseph McCarthy's Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations, as documented in transcripts released last week

"I studied that pot in graduate school." LIEUT. COLONEL MATTHEW BOGDANOS, U.S. Marine Corps Reserve officer, examining a clay pot recovered after looting in Iraq

"I am shocked by this decision, and by the callous refusal to offer me any justification for it." MICHAEL JORDAN, retired basketball great, after the Washington Wizards failed to rehire him as president of basketball operations

"I know I'm pretty, but it means I have to work even harder." PARIS HILTON, hotel heiress, responding to critics

Sources: Dallas Morning News, New York Times, AP, Washington Post, AP (2), New York Times, New York Post