Verbatim: Aug. 29, 2005

“We are disagreeing. We are failing to reach compromises. But we are not killing each other.”

BARHAM SALIH, Iraqi Minister of Planning, on hammering out a constitution, whose deadline for submission was extended a week

“I think it’s important for me to be thoughtful and sensitive to those who have got something to say. But it’s also important for me to go on with my life, to keep a balanced life.”

PRESIDENT GEORGE W. BUSH, on his decision not to meet with Cindy Sheehan, who waited two weeks in a roadside vigil to speak with him about her son’s death in Iraq, then left to take care of her mother after learning she had had a stroke

“Attacks on coalition forces are not going to result in the withdrawal of coalition forces.”

CHARLIE BROWN, U.S. Navy spokesman, after terrorists fired a rocket at a U.S. naval vessel in the Red Sea port of Aqaba, missing the ship but killing a Jordanian soldier

“William Weld is running because he is bored.”

HOWARD WOLFSON, Democratic strategist, on the former G.O.P. Governor of Massachusetts’ entry into the New York gubernatorial race. A win would make Weld the second American, after Sam Houston, to have governed two states

“If one wants the youth of America and the world sashaying around in garish sequined costumes, hair dripping with pomade, body shot full of female hormones to prevent voice change, mono-gloved, well, then I suppose ‘Michael,’ as he is affectionately known in the trade, is in fact a good example.”

JOHN ROBERTS, Supreme Court nominee, in a memo he wrote as a young lawyer in the Reagan Administration advising against giving Michael Jackson a presidential award for his work to discourage teens from drunk driving; Jackson received the award anyway

“They managed to start a fire, to keep warm and to keep the polar bears away … It was a bit like MacGyver.”

PETER BRAATEN, Norwegian official, on three unarmed Polish researchers, stranded for 15 hours on a remote Arctic island and surrounded by hungry polar bears before being rescued by helicopter

Sources: Los Angeles Times; USA Today; TIME; AP; TIME; AP