“When honest taxpayers feel like chumps, some of them start fudging, too.”

– Nina Olson, national taxpayer advocate for the federal Internal Revenue Service, following a report that $345 billion in federal income tax obligations went unpaid in 2001 because of tax cheaters.

“This wasn’t just a bunch of guys getting together to shoot hogs. This was scientific testing.”

– Stan Bulmer, president of marketing for the bullet-making company, Le Mas Ltd., which was criticized by animal rights activists for ballistics tests involving the shooting of live hogs.

“We got what we expected, not necessarily what we hoped for.”

– Washington State University basketball coach Dick Bennett, talking about his plans to retire at the end of what has been a disappointing season.

“We’re in a spot where the car’s going 160 miles an hour and it doesn’t have a steering wheel and we’re in the damn thing.”

– Idaho Fish and Game Commission Chairman John Watts, expressing frustration that the state has to defer to federal authorities in deciding whether to kill wolves that prey on elk in the Lolo Pass region.

“For anybody to think we’d want to plea-bargain with him, they’re totally crazy.”

– Mark Doble, whose wife is the younger sister of Brenda Groene, one victim of the slayings for which Joseph Duncan is charged with murder.

“The advice I’d give to autistic people is just keep working, keep dreaming.”

– Autistic high school student Jason McElwain, who, after serving all year as student manager of the Athena (N.Y.) High School basketball team, was allowed to suit up and play in the last game of the regular season, scoring 20 points in four minutes.

“We need to go back to old vigilante law – public hangings.”

– U.S. Sen. Conrad Burns, R-Mont., talking about the need for tougher sentences for those who make and sell methamphetamine.

“He was kidding about vigilante justice, but it shows a frustration he has with this drug.”

– Burns’ spokesman, Matt Mackowiak, clarifying the comments made a day earlier by his blunt-speaking boss.

“Why do I need to see her in Spandex? It has nothing to do with the quality of her mind. And if she were a man, they wouldn’t have asked her to do the story.”

– New York image consultant Samantha von Sperling, reacting to a three-part television interview in which Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice is shown working out.

“In some ways, I’m the luckiest person in the world. I could have ended up in Guantanamo Bay. Instead I ended up at Yale.”

– Former Taliban ambassador-at-large Sayed Rahmatullah Hashemifor, quoted by the New York Times, which reported he is enrolled at Yale on a U.S. student visa.

“It’s so apropos that America says, ‘Yes, a wrong has been committed, and let’s educate people that black people have made a significant contribution to America.’ “

– Langston University historian Currie Ballard, member of a task force planning a memorial to the little-known role of slaves in the construction of the nation’s Capitol.