“I don’t hold out a lot of hope for a ton of people showing up.”

– Collection agency official Troy Peterson, assessing the likelihood that the city of Spokane will get many takers if it offers scaled-back fees to people who have ignored parking tickets that are two years or more delinquent

“I wouldn’t consider myself a monster. I try to be the best person I can be.”

– Former Ferris High School teacher Sayeed X, during the court appearance where he pleaded guilty to a misdemeanor charge and was sentenced to six months in jail for carrying on a sexual affair with a 16-year-old student

“As if he were talking over coffee, relaying a fishing story.”

– Wichita police detective Kelly Otis, describing BTK killer Dennis Rader’s matter-of-fact account of slayings he had committed

“The last time this happened was the Holocaust.”

– Angry teenage Jewish girls, shouting at Israeli soldiers removing them from a synagogue in Gaza

“How do you adequately respond to two-and-a-half hours of comment?”

– Spokane County Air Pollution Control Authority Director Eric Skelton, at a SCAPCA board meeting where a variety of speakers had registered multiple complaints against the agency, including falsification of documents

“We had it slammed in our face what dollars we have to work with.”

– Spokane Valley City Councilman Dick Denenny, a member of the Spokane Transit Authority board of directors, expressing frustration over an appraisal that makes it unfeasible to sell STA’s downtown bus plaza for anything near its value as a transit center

“The market for slow, short white guys was not very big.”

– Race driver Tom Sneva, newly inducted into the Motorsports Hall of Fame of America, recalling his days as a basketball player at Lewis and Clark High School and Eastern Washington University

“This is worse than Sputnik.”

– Washington state Superintendent of Public Instruction Terry Bergeson, saying American schools are in danger of being outpaced by foreign competitors in a global economy

“But for dumb luck, nobody was hurt during either of those two incidents.”

– Deputy Spokane County Prosecutor Rachel Sterett, commenting about two pipe-bomb blasts set off on the Eastern Washington University campus, one just outside a 670-student dorm, by 20-year-old Brent J. Johnson, who has been sentenced to a maximum of three months behind bars