Quote Unquote

He was like a wonderful animal that had escaped the cage - Briony Brind, ballerina, on Rudolf Nureyev

We have been made scapegoats - Alexandros Gelis, captain of the tanker 'Braer', over criticism of his crew following the Shetland oil disaster

Pollsters and advisers are becoming the archpriests in politics and the politicians are in danger of becoming bit actors with their sound bites - John Prescott

I know they want me to show off more of my legs and make a big thing of them, but if people start ringing up to say they couldn't concentrate on a news story about Bosnia because they were looking at my fat thighs, then I'm not doing my job properly - Fiona Armstrong, GMTV presenter

Science as we learn it in school is cut and dried. Not so in real life. Scientists make false steps, miscommunicate with colleagues, endure confusion - James Gleick, science writer

The Citizen's Charter may not be for the man in the Rolls-Royce. It is for the man in the beaten-up car, stuck behind the Rolls-Royce - John Major

Stand by for John Major to be exposed as an all- powerful controller of the planet - Mary Seal, who claims there is a conspiracy to take over the world by the year 2000

I'm angry . . . I'm ready to sleep in the bush and live a tough life, but to die? - Jemmo Lodesani, deputy director of the World Food Programme, on the murder of British UN aid worker Sean Devereux

It is possible to ask just as testing a question in a jokey way, or a quiet way, or in a civilised way. If you go along the lines of unthinking hostility, you shut people up - Sir David Frost, responding to a charge that he had become soft as a TV interviewer

Is it a question of whether we have to decide whether the person is guilty or not guilty? - a jury at Snaresbrook Crown Court, north-east London, in a note to the judge