Quotable & Notable

“It smells of sulfur, still, today.”

-- Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez at the U.N. General Assembly Sept. 20 while making the sign of the cross. He called President Bush, who spoke the day before, “the devil.”

“The fence itself will probably have to be built by immigrants.”

-- A Wall Street Journal editorial deriding efforts to build a wall on the border with Mexico. The Journal favors a worker visa program to control illegal immigration.

“Religion gives good people bad reasons for being good where good reasons are available.”

-- Sam Harris, who in his book Letter to a Christian Nation, urges secularists to become bolder and more aggressive

“I’m not an arm-waver and a clapper and a dancer.”

-- The Rev. Bill Hybels of South Barrington, Ill., explaining why he chooses to stand, eyes closed in contemplation, while others in his church sway and wave their arms in praise

“Goal is to walk away with contact information, money and volunteers and a committee in each church.”

-- Kansas Attorney General Phill Kline, who is running for re-election this fall, in a memo to his campaign staff, reported by the Lawrence Journal-World in Kansas

“I’m very happy with the outcome but only on a personal basis. As long as [Article] 301 is out there ... there’ll be many other cases like this.”

-- Elif Shafak, Turkey’s most celebrated woman novelist, who was acquitted Sept. 21 of violating article 301 of the penal code, that is, of “insulting Turkishness”

National Catholic Reporter, September 29, 2006