"Mom, can we stay? ... Is there anything we can do to stay?"

-- Pedro Ramirez Jr., 15, a United States citizen who flew out of San Francisco International Airport in April bound for Mexico, after his parents were ordered deported.

"I don't mind looking at a bird, but I don't want to read about it."

-- Ron Cooper, chair of the Palo Alto Public Art Commission, regarding a proposed design that would have combined text and images of birds on a soundwall along U.S. Highway 101.

"I think it's something younger people use more than old fogies like me."

-- Palo Alto City Councilman Peter Drekmeier, the council's youngest member, of the Palo Alto-based Web site Facebook.

"I'm looking forward to exhaling."

-- Yitzchok Feldman, the Congregation Emek Beracha rabbi who spearheaded the Palo Alto eruv effort in 1999, on the eruv's approval in June.

"Jump in your cars and get the hell out."

-- Jan Terry, president of the Palo Alto Hills Neighborhood Association, describing the foothills residents' not-so-detailed evacuation plan in the event of a fire.

"When someone has taken three-quarters to one million dollars away from you, when have they ever given it back?"

-- City Councilwoman Dena Mossar, on the Valley Transportation Authority's pledge to help fund mass transit in Palo Alto, after cutting part of bus route 88.

"Global warming isn't just a problem that's limited to penguins in Antarctica."

-- Will Travis, executive director of the San Francisco Bay Conservation and Development Commission, on expected local flooding.

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