Quotes of the week

If Beethoven were alive now, I'm sure he would use the Internet.

Ryuichi Sakamoto, Oscar-winning Japanese composer

Margaret Thatcher was at all times intensely and admirably practical, and never more so than in her brilliant trick, as she sat down to the dinner table, of deftly and unobtrusively hitching up any parts of her attire, within decency, that might otherwise have got unnecessarily creased. Lord Lawson, ex-Chancellor

On important days, my old teacher always said, let the speeches be short, and the sausages be long. The vital thing is to sustain oneself.

Helmut Kohl,German Chancellor

Lucky old Bob.

Estate agent commenting on Bob Geldof and Paula Yates's divorce house- swap, in which she gets her old marital home and he gets a house in Chelsea's ultra-fashionable Cheyne Walk from her lover Michael Hutchence

People like me were branded, pigeon-holed, a ceiling put on our ambitions.

John Prescott, deputy Labour leader, on his humiliation at failing the 11-plus, in a speech attacking government plans to extend grammar schools