Quotes of the week

If any of you have got an A-level it is because you have worked to get it. Go to any other country and when you have got an A-level you have bought it - Michael Portillo speaking at Southampton University

A bit like George Eliot (in Middlemarch), I created a character with some of my characteristics - Edwina Currie MP talking about her new novel on 'The Late Show'

It's a book in the technical sense. It has pages, a cover . . - Ian Hislop reviewing the same novel on the same programme

Sorry, I've got to go now - Gerry Adams to Jeremy Paxman on 'Newsnight', Wednesday

It's a vast mistake to use the resources of the state to suppress blasphemy. God was quite prepared to risk his own death, so defending him from blasphemy is a waste of time - The out-going Bishop of Durham, the Rt Rev David Jenkins

I simply do not believe that the Archbishop of Canterbury has this quasi-miraculous power, which he claims, to turn women into priests - Auberon Waugh