GEORGE BUSH to the crowd welcoming him to retirement in Houston
“What a dweeb. He did not even have his windows down.”
RAMONA JOYCE Inaugural parade spectator, after Clinton drove past her section of the crowd in a closed limo with tinted windows
“I don’t necessarily consider McDonald’s junk food. You know, they have chicken sandwiches, they have salads.”
BILL CLINTON explaining the limits of his personal no-junk-food policy
“Meeting him, shaking his hand–it was overwhelming. It was better than sex. Of course, I haven’t had sex before, but I’m sure this was better.”
TYLER PETERSON a high-school Boys Nation delegate, after meeting Bill Clinton at the White House
“I would have given it more of an oval look. If you look at it, the top of his head looks pointed.”
MILTON PITTS former White House barber, on Clinton’s haircut
“Headache.”
Secret Service code name for First Brother Roger Clinton “If I’m going to propose, we might as well have a good line.”
BILL CLINTON explaining to judge Ruth Bader Ginsburg that he’d have to call her back to offer the Supreme Court job because of a bad phone connection
“Get some furniture in there that’s comfortable to sit on. Throw some pillows around, light some candles. A good sound system would help, too. The White House is so quiet inside it’s really eerie.”
PATTI DAVIS advising Hillary Clinton on how to liven up the presidential residence
“We just screwed all these people.”
HILLARY RODHAM CLINTON pointing out to her husband the crowds still waiting outside as time for a post-Inaugural White House open house wound down
“It would be good publicity-wise for us. But I don’t know how good it would be commotion-wise.”
DANNY GOLDMAN,16, Sidwell Friends student, on the news that Chelsea Clinton will attend the school
“When the president called for sacrifice and asked everybody at the White House to give him a 25 percent cut, I decided to go for a 50 percent cut and do my part.”
HILLARY RODHAM CLINTON on her new, shorter hairstyle
“She should…have a serious talk with Denis Thatcher. He knew how to behave.”
SIR BERNARD INGHAM press secretary to British ex-prime minister Margaret Thatcher, offering Hillary Rodham Clinton advice on First Spouse decorum
“It’s been a long time since either one of us has gone out of each other’s way to contact the other.”
ROGER CLINTON the First Brother, on his relationship with Hillary Rodham Clinton
“We’ve made a lot of progress on, you know, pasta and things like that-but tofu has been hard for us.”
HILLARY RODHAM CLINTON on the difficulties of improving the presidential diet
“I have fought more damn battles here for more things than any president has in 20 years with the possible exception of Reagan’s first budget and not gotten one damn bit of credit from the knee-jerk liberal press. I am sick and tired of it, and you can put that in the damn article.”
BILL CLINTON in an interview with Rolling Stone magazine, on charges that he is a disappointment to many supporters
“We checked the Constitution, and we don’t see where it gives you the right to universal health insurance.”
JACK FARIS president of the National Federation of Independent Business, explaining why his organization opposes the White House health-care proposal
“People will be hunting Democrats with dogs by the end of the century.”
SENATOR PHIL GRAMM a Texas Republican, on what will happen if Clinton’s proposals are instituted
“I thought to myself, ‘That was a pretty speech, but not good enough to give twice’.”
BILL CLINTON on what went through his mind when an old speech to Congress initially flashed up on the TelePrompTer as he began his health-care address
“They have the gall to run TV ads that there is a better way–the very industry that has brought us to the brink of bankruptcy…”
HILLARY RODHAM CLINTON in a speech to pediatricians attacking the health-insurance industry
“This thing will be won or lost around the kitchen tables around the country. If people say it’s too complicated and don’t get involved, then it’s Gucci Gulch–the high-priced lobbyists, through their campaign financing–who will prevail.”
JOHN ROTHER chief lobbyist for the American Association of Retired Persons, on Clinton’s health-care plan
“Don’t worry, I’ll pay the bill.”
ROSS PEROT offering to rent the largest arena available for his NAFTA debate with Vice President Al Gore
“Are you going to listen? Work on it.”
ROSS PEROT in a typical exchange with Gore
“Perot is a good fellow. He’s worth a couple of billion dollars. I like him, but he’s on the wrong side of the angels here.”
LEE IACOCCA gearing up for his role in the administration’s challenge to Ross Perot’s anti-NAFTA campaign
“You guys resting?”
BILL CLINTON to former presidents Bush, Carter and Ford, after they requested chairs during his prolonged NAFTA speech
“No doughnuts for them.
DEE DEE MYERS Clinton press secretary, referring to several anti-NAFTA members of Congress attending a White House breakfast the day after the bill passed the House
“They’re worried about allowing people like us in the military. But I’m concerned about people like this.”
CRAE PRIDGEN victim of a gay-bashing attack by three marines in North Carolina
“Whatever war you were in, I know it was before the Clinton fags-in-the-foxhole [proposal].”
WARREN BARRY Virginia state Sen. at a GOP testimonial dinner where several speakers, including Oliver North, also made jokes about gays and blacks
“Scuds hold no terror for our men in uniform. But suds…”
RICK HOROWITZ syndicated columnist, on the gay-soldiers debate
“You don’t need to be “straight’ to fight and die for your country. You just need to shoot straight.”
HARRY COLDWATER former Arizona senator, on the military’s gay ban
“One ofyou might trip ove it and break a leg. Then you d sue us and it would run up the deficits.”
BILL CLINTON stopping the line of visitors at his White House open house while a rug was taped down
“On April 15th, just try telling the IRS that you don’t feel like ‘contributing’ this year.”
BOB MICHEL House GOP leader, on Bill Clinton’s avoidance of the word “taxes”
“They can kiss my rear end, if they can leap that high.”
PETE WILSON California governor, responding to Democratic criticism of his illegal-immigration-reform proposals
“We found Third World conditions in our own backyards.”
VIRGILIO BRAVO a teenage volunteer in the National Service Program, describing his experience to President Bill Clinton
“I think Mr. Darman has proved himself an expert on math not adding up.”
BILL CLINTON on criticisms of his economic plan by Bush budget chief Richard Darman, who disclosed that the federal deficit will be some $60 billion higher than expected
A WORLD OF TROUBLE
“Let us demonstrate to the world, as generations of Americans have done before us, that when Americans take on a challenge, they do the job right.”
BILL CLINTON announcing the doubling of U.S. soldiers in Somalia
“We’ve got him.”
JOE GRADISHER Pentagon spokesman, announcing that captured U.S. helicopter pilot Michael Durant had been freed in Somalia
“Comfort. Safety. Luxury. For Business or Discrete Weekends.”
The motto on stationery for the Sahafi Hotel in Mogadishu, Somalia
“I feel strongly that society needs to condemn a little more and understand a little less.”
JOHN MAJOR British prime minister, following the murder of James Bulger and the arrest of two 10-year-old boys for the crime
“These chaps at M.1.5 are a funny lot these days, you know, not the decent cricketing sort of chaps they used to be.”
BRIAN INNES espionage expert, on claims that the British security service has been eavesdropping on the royal family
“We do not assassinate dead people.”
ABDUL JABBAR MUHSIN Saddam Hussein’s press secretary, denying reports of a failed Iraqi plot to kill George Bush
“Don’t squat when waiting for a bus or a person. Don’t spit in public. Don’t point at people with your fingers. Don’t make noise. Don’t laugh loudly. Don’t yell or call to people from a distance. Don’t pick your teeth, pick your nose, blow your nose, pick at your ears, rub your eyes or rub dirt off your skin. Don’t scratch, take off your shoes, burp, stretch or hum.”
From a list of tips to travelers abroad, issued by the Chinese government
“You don’t make peace with friends. You make it with very savory enemies.”
YITZHAK RABIN Israeli prime minister, on the agreement of mutual recognition between Israel and the Palestine Liberation Organization
“You have no choice around here. The faster you drive, the longer you live.”
BIRNO TUFIK Sarajevo resident, on speeding in his hometown
“Jesus said, “Love your neighbors.’ Well, I do love them. I love to kill them.”
DUSKO NIKOLIC Croatian policeman known as “Nasty Nick,” on Serbian residents of his town
“It’s going to be a tough neighborhood.”
ANTHONY LAKE National-security adviser, on the U.S. decision not to land troops in Haiti
“He didn’t appear to be afraid at all. He just readjusted his Atlanta Braves cap, not looking disturbed in any way. He was even joking, saying this is what we came to Moscow for, isn’t it?”
OTTO POHL New York Times photographer, on the final moments of American lawyer Terry Michael Duncan, 26, who was killed during the shoot-out at Russia’s television station
“Not enough salt in the hamburger.”
BORIS YELTSIN Russian president, critiquing the Big Mac he consumed at a new McDonald’s in Moscow
“It’s just like Pepsi-Cola!”
EDUARD SHEVARDNADZE Georgia leader and former Soviet foreign minister, after sampling Coca-Cola at the opening of a new Coke bottling plant in Tbilisi
LAW & DISORDER
“Like I say, it would’ve been better if you just called me up or talked to me. Then you all could have come in and done your work.”
DAVID KORESH in a phone conversation with a government negotiator shortly after the botched Feb. 28 raid on the Branch Davidian compound
“Twice he was acquitted. Once I fixed the jury.”
SALVATORE (SAMMY BULL) GRAVANO Mafia hit man turned government witness, in testimony correcting the assertion that
“The rules are different here.”
From a Florida tourism-promotion campaign, now canceled
“The buck stops with me.”
JANET RENO attorney general, on the decision to tear-gas the Branch Davidian cult’s Waco compound
“I am by no stretch of the imagination a spy. I’m a researcher.”
ROY BULLOCK answering accusations that he picked through garbage, posed as an Arab-American activist and tapped phones as an operative of the Anti-Defamation League, a Jewish civil-rights organization
“If you steal from us we take your picture and we beat you.”
Sign in a Bronx, N.Y., supermarket, where a woman was reportedly lashed several times with an electrical cord after being accused of stealing a box of Pampers
“Streaking. Mooning. Ballwalking. Leg Shaving. Belly/Naval Shots. Chicken Fights. Butt Biting.”
Chapter headings from the Pentagon’s report on abuses at the navy’s 1991 Tailhook Association convention
“He said he was sorry for the language, that he couldn’t say every word right…But he could say “refund’ perfect. The guy wanted the four.”
PATRICK GALASSO Ryder rental agent, on World Trade Center bombing suspect Mohammed Salameh’s attempts to get back his $400 van-rental deposit
“I can’t even picture being put in prison because…a small but loud part of the community of Los Angeles wants everything handed to them on a silver platter garnished with $100 bills instead of working for it.”
LAURENCE POWELL former L.A. policeman, in a letter to a police magazine about the “ignorant, politically correct” views that led to his conviction in the Rodney King beating trial
“My brother was in the room. He looked at me and said, “We are Christians. We’ve got to go help him out,’ and I said, “Right.’ Then he went and got his keys.”
LIE YUILLE testigying at the Reginald Denny beating trial in Los Angeles, on why she and other African-Americans helped rescue the fallen truckdriver after seeing him on local TV coverage of the April 1992 riots
“Let it burn down, because I don’t live there anymore.”
DARRYL STRAWBERRY Los Angeles Dodger outfielder, who plans to buy a home in Arizona, on the fires that ravaged the Los Angeles area. He later apologized.
“It was absolutely beautiful. An excellent experience–for a disaster.”
PAUL POSSEMATO Laguna Beach, Calif., school superintendent, on the success of a student evacuation drill in the face of wildfires in the area
“Thank God you’re here, and I’d like to have a cigarette.”
HARVEY WENSTEIN New York tuxedo king, upon his rescue after being kidnapped and trapped in a nine-foot hole for 12 days
“I think that Amy Fisher shot the wrong Buttafuoco, and she aimed too high.”
A female member of the Donahue show audience, to guest Joey Buttafuoco
“Office of the Vice President…The Council on Competativeness”
Letterhead on stationery, complete with misspelling, found in Dan Quayle’s old White House office by Clinton administration staffers
“He had a red dress on, and a black feather boa around his neck…After about half and hour some boys came, like before. This time they’re dressed in leather. And Hoover had a Bible. He wanted one of the boys to read from the Bible. And he read, I forget which passage, and the other boy played with him, wearing the rubber gloves.”
SUSAN ROSENSTIEL wife of an alleged mob-connected Hoover crony, as quoted in “Official and Confidential: The Secret Life of J. Edgar Hoover,” Anthony Summers’s biography of the late FBI director
“He is the least weird man I’ve ever known.”
ELIZABETH TAYLOR on her friend Michael Jackson
“You know you’re out of power when your limousine is yellow and your driver speaks Farsi.”
JAMES BAKER former secretary of state, at a recent Washington dinner
“That was part of the swinging period of the ’70s–I was exploring the outer limits of my sexuality, and it included bisexuality. But I never really had an emotional connection with a man.”
HUGH HEFNER Playboy magazine founder, revealing he had sex with men
“I can’t stand to touch those plastic breasts.”
DONALD TRUMP on ex-wife Ivana’s cosmetic surgery, as quoted in “Lost Tycoon: The Many Lives of Donald J. Trump” by Harry Hurt III, a book that Trump calls “disgusting” and “false”
“Senators are expected to shave and wear socks.”
JOHN GRISHAM author and former state legislator, on why he won’t run for a Senate seat
“I’ve been learning about the sweet mysteries of life and this is one of them…We came from completely different worlds and we collided, and we knew we wanted to be in each other’s company right then.”
ANDRE AGASSI, 23 tennis star, on his relationship with Barbra Streisand, 51, who showed up at Wimbledon to cheer him on
“Martina was so far in the closet she ws in danger of being a garment bag.”
RITA MAE BROWN ex-lover of tennis star Martina Navratilova, on their relationship
“I let him live on a farm. I guess he learned naturally from the animals that were around.”
PAT ROBERTSON televangelist who opposes sex education in schools, on his son Tim’s introduction to the facts of life
“You do what you want. The boys will stay with me.”
PRINCE CHARLES quoted in the British tabloid Today, telling the Princess of Wales of his plan to spend a six-day Christmas holiday among the Windsors at Sandringham. Diana traveled to Althorp, the Spencer family seat.
“You supposedly get different as you get older. I’m not so aggressive. I’m not so ready to punch people out as I used to be.”
MICK JAGGER on turning 50
“Everything is Joey and Amy. I get embarrassed when I’m out shopping. You can feel all those eyes on you. The newspapers are filled with Joey Buttafuoco sightings. And who cares what Amy’s doing in jail? She’s an idiot who shot a housewife with two kids. I did’t ask for a bullet in the head. I didn’t ask for any of this.”
MARY JO BUTTAFUOCO on her continuing life under the microscope of notoriety
“She looks like a whore and thinks like a pimp…the very best sort of modern girl.”
JULIE BURCHILL acerbic British writer, on Madonna
“I cannot think of anybody else I would sooner not appoint to this post. She is a lady short on looks, absolutely deprived of any dress sense, has a figure like a Jurassic monster, is very greedy when it comes to loot, not tact and wants to upstage everyone else.”
SIR NICHOLAS FAIRBAIRN British parliamentarian, on the rumors that “Fergie,” the Duchess of York, will be appointed to the U.N. High Commission for Refugees
“Well, I’m on an economy drive right now.”
PRINCESS DIANA responding to an admirer in Birmingham, England, who noted she was wearing the same utfit she wore on her last visit to the city five months earlier
“The person “Heidi’ that people talk about–in the history of time, no one did what she did in one year. No one.”
HEIDI FLEISS accused Hollywood madam, defending her business savvy, which she claims helped put “a lot of girls” through college
