“He died on his own terms. This was the way he wanted it. So this last year became a victory lap for him. It gave him the opportunity to catch up with people, and he had an opportunity to say goodbye, and not too many people get that opportunity.”

– Joel Buchwald, son of Pulitzer Prize-winning newspaper columnist Art Buchwald, who died last week having lived months longer than expected after deciding last February to forgo dialysis treatment for kidney failure.

“Why do you need advice on how to be transparent? It’s a little contradictory in nature.”

– Spokane City Councilman Al French, criticizing Mayor Dennis Hession’s plans to hire a public relations firm to manage the release of a $260,000 “turn-around study” purchased by the city.

“To be perfectly honest, I think we were completely left out and it didn’t have to be that way.”

– Spokane City Councilwoman Nancy McLaughlin, speaking to Hession during last week’s council meeting about the guarded manner in which the mayor had handled information about the study’s findings.

“They do stupider things.”

– Former military pilot Paul Fischbeck, explaining the findings in a study he co-authored that men are 77 percent more likely to die in traffic accidents than women.

“He’ll have to make deadlines like anyone else. And he has to be aware that a 20-year-old student will be editing his stuff.”

Faculty adviser Nils Rosdahl, commenting on 62-year-old Stan Hess, an alleged white supremacist who has enrolled to be on the staff of North Idaho College’s student newspaper, the Sentinel.

“What we’re preparing now is a flawed plan that’s going to be fixed in five years.”

– Liberty Lake Planning Commission member Steve McElvain, on a recommendation he helped send to the City Council that Liberty Lake not expand its urban growth area, even though population estimates call for 16,000 more residents in the next two decades.

“The longer we wait, the more severe, the more Draconian, the more difficult the objective – the adjustments – are going to be. I think the right time to start is about 10 years ago.”

– Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke, telling the Senate Budget Committee that the mounting federal budget deficits and growing demands of Social Security and Medicare present the United States with staggering fiscal challenges.

“If the commission makes it political, it’s a grave mistake.”

– Spokane County Civil Service Commissioner Curt Berklund, who helped overturn the firing of a sheriff’s deputy, warning that county commissioners shouldn’t base their appointments to positions like his on the popularity of civil service rulings.

“My wife just bought me a brand new gun that would have been legal to use last season, but now it’s not good for anything but hanging on the wall.”

– Idaho muzzleloader enthusiast David Vig, whose hunting weapon of choice has been outlawed by the state’s Fish and Game Commission.