Quotes from Jack Lynch

It is obvious that the RUC is no longer accepted as an impartial police force.

We have, therefore, directed the Irish Army authorities to have field hospitals established in County Donegal adjacent to Derry and at other points along the Border where they may be necessary.

Arguments over grammar and style are often as fierce as those over IBM versus Mac, and as fruitless as Coke versus Pepsi and boxers versus briefs.

To this day, good English usually means the English wealthy and powerful people spoke a generation or two ago.

There's no such thing as an unabridged dictionary.

Oddly, the highly productive writer found writing wearing. "My botherations often won't let me work,"11 he complained. He

Nicholson Baker, a man who knows the joys of obsessive research, has already started the division. "Let me tell you," he says, "I remember the old days, the antegoogluvian era. It was O.K.—it wasn't horrible by any means. There were cordless telephones, and people wore comfortable sweaters… . But the haul was haphazard, and it came in slow.

He revels in obscure words, as in his list of phobias including pteronophobia (tickling with feathers), xenoglossophobia (foreign languages), scorodophobia (garlic), as well as in his tour through various techniques of divination, including geloscopy (the interpretation of laughter), bletonism (analyzing currents of water), and sciomancy (shadows or ghosts).

A reporter covering the event—mostly out of bemusement—went on to identify the lexicographer and language columnist Ben Zimmer, editor of the pathbreaking Visual Thesaurus, as "a major geek." In some circles that might have led to a libel suit, but most of the DSNA participants embraced the nerdiness of the event, even performing dictionary-related songs at the conference-ending banquet. Peter

It was an old .38 caliber Colt Army revolver, the basic 1892 model that had been modified two years later.