Quotable & notable

"We can't flog him. We can't incarcerate him. That's up to the Justice Department."

--Erik Prince of the Blackwater security firm telling a congressional committee that as a private company Blackwater was limited in how it could deal with an employee who killed a bodyguard for the Iraqi vice president. "We fired him and fined him," Prince said

"Let's go, or somebody is going to get shot."

--A U.N. official intervening between Jimmy Carter and a Sudanese security chief, who had blocked the former U.S. president from meeting with refugees from Darfur. Carter was in Sudan with a delegation of international figures called the Elders.

"I'm now crossing this forbidden line. More people will follow me.... Then this forbidden line will gradually disappear. The barrier will collapse."

--South Korean President Roh Moo-hyun Oct. 2 becoming the first Korean leader to walk across the border at the center of the four-mile wide Demilitarized Zone that has separated the two Koreas for 54 years

"All prayers, no matter what the words, are really one of five prayers: Thank you; Lord, have mercy; God damn it!; Help!; and Wow!"

--Nancy Mairs, author of A Dynamic God: Living an Unconventional Catholic Faith, paraphrasing Dorothy Day's thoughts on prayer

COPYRIGHT 2007 National Catholic Reporter
COPYRIGHT 2008 Gale, Cengage Learning