“My plan is not to have a plan.”

– Spokane Valley native and U.S. Ambassador to Iraq Ryan Crocker, who is about to step down from his foreign service career and build a home in Spokane County.

“There is a history of the tribes not being treated fairly in state court. I don’t think that would be true today in Idaho or Washington, but there is a basis for their nervousness.”

– Washington state Ecology Department Director Jay Manning, contemplating why Indian tribes in the Inland Northwest might be wary of a process to adjudicate water rights involving the Spokane River and the region’s aquifer.

“It’s an understandable error under the circumstances, but we should have informed the public.”

– Spokane Mayor Mary Verner, after learning that most of the materials city residents left in their curbside recycling bins during last month’s heavy snowfalls were burned at the Waste-to-Energy Plant along with garbage.

“I don’t consider taking too big a slice out of our potential revenue to be erring on the side of caution, particularly when you look at programs that we need to move our state toward recovery.”

– Idaho state Rep. Shirley Ringo, D-Moscow, questioning the wisdom of a revenue estimate that could take another $101 million out of Gov. Butch Otter’s lean state budget proposal.

“The occupier must halt his fire immediately and withdraw from our land and lift his blockade and open all crossings, and we will not accept any one Zionist soldier on our land, regardless of the price that it costs.”

– Hamas spokesman Fawzi Barhoum, saying it will take more than Israel’s unilateral cease-fire to achieve peace in Gaza.

“If they stop firing, we will consider leaving Gaza at a time that is suitable to us. If they continue attacking us, they will again be surprised by our determination.”

– Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, explaining that his country’s commitment to a cease-fire has limits.

“We can’t just step back and say, ‘It’ll take care of itself.’ We won’t be able to keep the good police officers, the good teachers, the good firefighters.”

– Company president Steve White, whose Copper Basin Construction donated most of the seed money for a new nonprofit agency that helps working-class buyers afford homes in North Idaho.

“The North Koreans are saying in effect that, ‘We are a nuclear weapons state and you have to deal with us on that basis.’ ”

– U.S. scholar Selig Harrison, after arriving in Beijing from Pyongyang, where North Korean officials reportedly told him they have weaponized their stockpile of plutonium.