“You can’t be a sovereign land without land.”

– Hoh Indian Tribal Secretary Marie Riebe, commenting on the tribe’s plans to relocate a village which is in danger of being washed away by the meandering Hoh River in Western Washington.

“This is a year to be careful. I wouldn’t be above 5,000 feet in exposed terrain for anything. Go watch a football game.”

Aptly named avalanche expert Shep Snow, of Sandpoint, commenting on the serious risks associated with this winter’s weather patterns.

“I’d much rather be known for catching a record muskie than being the guy who got thrown in the clink.”

– Scott Hughes, regretting the publicity he received after his attempt to protect a young woman he says he thought was being accosted at a Spokane County store turned out to be a shoplifting suspect whom two store security officers were trying to detain.

“At the end of the day, people got on and made comments they shouldn’t have made on the airplane, and other people heard them. Other people heard them, misconstrued them. It just so happened these people were of Muslim faith and appearance. It escalated, it got out of hand and everyone took precautions.”

– AirTran spokesman Tad Hutcheson, defending his airline’s decision to remove nine Muslim passengers – all but one native U.S. citizens – from a Washington-Orlando flight, based on other passengers’ suspicions.

“What I am not is a fundamentalist. You become a fundamentalist when you stop listening.”

– Socially conservative evangelist Rick Warren, whose controversial choice by President-elect Barack Obama to give the inauguration invocation on Jan. 20 has focused attention on his faith.

“I just would never leave my kid with nobody unless it was a family member now.”

– Jennifer Wilcox, of Clarkston, whose 7-month-old baby died last March after being left in the care of Wilcox’s boyfriend, now charged with murder, while she was at work.

“We think that Chicago might well have been very near ground zero.”

– Arizona geophysicist Allen West, one of the authors of a scientific paper contending that a comet exploding over North America 13,000 years ago killed off such prehistoric mammals as mammoths and saber-toothed tigers.