If you can't avoid being deported, scarper now before it's too late. Slip away at night. ... Put on your false nose. Dye your hair. See a plastic surgeon. Become someone else and run, run, run.

Ronald Biggs, Great Train Robber, advising Australian fugitive Christopher Skase

Even the Prime Minister publicly gets in touch with his feelings; where once we liked our leaders to stand granite-faced and immovable in the face of disaster, nowadays we insist that they sniffle.

Libby Purves

I hope that after my Lord Chancellorship, people will say I am a people's Lord Chancellor.

Lord Irvine of Lairg

As a Tory, it saddens me to belong to a party that has everything in common with the ostrich.

Sir Julian Critchley, former Conservative MP

My success has been based on my clarity and on some luck. I have never been a hard worker. I am not a long-hours man. I just prioritise my ideas. I focus on a few ideas and move on.

Gerry Robinson, millionaire leader of the Arts Council

If you think of this thing as 400 miles across ... we're talking more than 30 hours for it to get by you. Your home during that time is going to be battered over and over and over.

Jerry Jarrell, National Hurricane Centre director, on Hurricane Bonnie

No one with experience of school-leavers believes they know so much more or are so much better educated now than 10 or 20 years ago.

Anthony O'Hear, former member of the School Curriculum and Assessment Authority

It does not take courage to sneak up behind a policeman and shoot him in the back of the head ... What takes courage is to compete in the arena of democracy where the tools are not bombs and bullets, but reason, logic, advocacy and where the risk of failure is high and very public.

George Mitchell, senator and Ireland peace talks chairman