"A secondary the size Wise reported would need to fully consume 90% of its thermonuclear fuel, including the uranium, in order to produce the W-88 warhead's advertized yield of 475 kilotons. If that calculation is correct, there is little wonder the W-88 warhead is still our most modern warhead, despite its being a twenty-five year old, mid-1970s design. It would be a waste of time trying to squeeze out the last 10%. I was recently told that 1962 was the year when weapon designers 'ran out of things to invent.' A dozen years later, they apparently gave up trying."

-- Howard Morland

"By this logic, the Tate-LaBianca murders are part of the damage that the Beatles did in creating the White Album."

-- Michael Leddy

"Feng says Common Cause has gotten reports about [voting district] lines being tailored for incredibly petty desires; in one case, California pols drew a legislator’s grandmother into his district, in another, they drew lines to exclude a sole voter — a pesky gadfly whom a local politician hated dealing with."

-- LA Weekly

"Houston, we have a problem. There is probably no artefact in the history of space exploration more precious than the first television images of the Moon captured by Neil Armstrong and his fellow astronauts as they disembarked from their lunar module in July 1969.

Unfortunately, the magnetic tapes of those images have gone missing. Worse still, they appear to have been missing for at least 30 years - and nobody, until now, even noticed."

-- Andrew Gumbel, The Independent, August 13, 2006.

"I am in a very sensitive profession. I am a quack. Which is to say, I'm ahead of my time in the field of psychic treatment."

-- Jules Amthor in Murder, My Sweet

"Some of the information required on this worksheet may seem to be irrelevant or even unwarranted. Please know that the California State Bureau of Records consider each item to be important."

-- Santa Monica UCLA Medical Center Birth Certificate Worksheet

"I could almost fancy that I saw him standing in the shadow of my room, so well had Shakespeare drawn him, with his golden hair, his tender flower-like grace, his dreamy deep silken eyes, his delicate mobile limbs, and his white lily hands. His very name fascinated me. Willie Hughes! Willie Hughes! How musically it sounded! Yes; who else but he could have been the master-mistress of Shakespeare's passion,¹ the lord of his love to whom he was bound in vassalage,² the delicate minion of pleasure,³ the rose of the whole world,⁴ the herald of the spring⁵ decked in proud livery of youth,⁶ the lovely boy whom it was sweet music to hear,⁷ and whose beauty was the very raiment of Shakespeare's heart,⁸ as it was the keystone of his dramatic power? How bitter now seemed the whole tragedy of his desertion and his shame! -- shame that he made sweet and lovely⁹ by the mere magic of his personality, but that was none the less shame. Yet as Shakespeare forgave him, should not we forgive him also? I did not care to pry into the mystery of his sin."

-- Oscar Wilde, The Portrait of Mr. W.H.

¹ Sonnet xx. 2. ² Sonnet xxvi. 1. ³ Sonnet cxxvi. 9. ⁴ Sonnet cix. 14. ⁵ Sonnet i. 10. ⁶ Sonnet ii. 3. ⁷ Sonnet viii. 1. ⁸ Sonnet xxii. 6. ⁹ Sonnet xcv. 1.