They Said What? for Jan. 4, 2005

• “The judges were so paid off.”
– Anna Nicole Smith, to a Las Vegas reporter, the day after a federal appeals court reversed a judgment awarding her $88.5 million from the estate of her elderly billionaire husband, J. Howard Marshall

• “Don’t print that! You can’t print that!”
– Howard K. Stern, Smith’s lawyer

• “Oh my God! The Mother Focker!”
– Sideways actress Virginia Madsen, upon seeing Meet the Fockers star Barbra Streisand

• “He always knew his lines – and yours too.”
– Law & Order’s Sam Waterson, eulogizing his late costar Jerry Orbach

• “Sometimes I walk down the street and I feel like the mayor of New York. (But) better. A lot of people don’t like the mayor.”
– Bill Murray, on attracting crowds of fans

• “People with plates over their faces moaning and groaning and singing was for me (a) dead loss. I hated all that stuff.”
– Monty Python troupe member Eric Idle, on why his new musical Spamalot will be more entertaining than Andrew Lloyd Webber’s The Phantom of the Opera

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• “I’m not psychic. I dreamed John Kerry won the election!”
– Patricia Arquette, comparing herself to her clairvoyant character on the new NBC show Medium

• “If I go to a club, I am not going to come out of it trashed. I’d rather stay home with my friends if I’m going to do that – especially if you know there are going to be 20 guys with cameras waiting for you outside.”
– Lindsay Lohan, on the price of fame, to CosmoGirl magazine

• “This week, President Bush was chosen as Person of the Year by Time magazine. Not only that, Martha Stewart was chosen as Person of the Year by Doing Time magazine.”
– Conan O’Brien