“We talk a lot, but we don’t communicate very much.”

– Idaho Gov. Butch Otter, describing his relationship with state legislative leaders during the recent session, when fellow Republicans failed to enact many of his proposals.

“Sometimes you can be so close to something – it’s not really visionary, it’s more like having visions.”

– Spokane County Commissioner Bonnie Mager, refraining from sharing her colleagues’ enthusiasm for the county’s purchase of part of Spokane Raceway Park.

“That certainly got my attention. It made me a lot more cognizant of looking at school zone signs.”

– Idaho state Sen. John Goedde, R-Coeur d’Alene, saying he deserved the fine he got for driving too fast in a school zone on Feb. 28, the day his bill to increase the penalty for that offense was being debated in the Senate.

“I don’t know what they’re doing with these cows.”

– Chicago-area resident Markita Barrett, a single mother despairing over the price of milk, which has increased 14 percent in the past year.

“My kids are sobbing because they’re those strange kids that actually love school.”

– Spokane parent Angie Dierdorff, trying to secure a doctor’s verification that her sons already have had chickenpox so the boys could return to Jefferson Elementary School, the site of an outbreak of the disease.

“Charles McNabb is not conducting a hunger strike; he is attempting to commit suicide.”

– Washington Supreme Court Justice Barbara Madsen, concurring in a majority opinion that upheld the state Department of Corrections’ authority to force-feed an inmate who was trying to starve to death.

“It seems to me the only purpose of this policy is to exercise control over the only thing remaining to Mr. McNabb, his body.”

– Madsen’s Supreme Court colleague, Justice Richard Sanders, the only member of the court who dissented in the ruling.