"Even if it grows at only 10 percent annually, China's domestic consumption will grow 3.5 times to 30 trillion yuan ($4.25 trillion) by 2020."

Yu Guangzhou, Vice Minister of Commerce of China, expressing his belief that China's increasingly consumption-driven economy will drive the world, when speaking at the China Development Forum in Beijing in late March

"Those who oppose the war will see it as further reason to end it. Those who support it will point to military progress and say that future casualties will be much lower."

Anthony Cordesman, an Iraq analyst at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington, saying the 4,000th U.S. military death in Iraq, which happened on March 24, could trigger another wave of polarized debate

"For us it is enough that an Afghan girl is going to the Beijing Games. She doesn't have to get first or second place, she has overcome so many problems and she is already an inspiration."

Shahpoor Amiri, coach of 19-year-old Mehboba Andyar who is the only female competitor in Afghanistan's delegation to this year's Olympic Games in Beijing

"The technologies exist. You and I and the World Bank and everyone else can identify the need. The big problem all along is about who's going to pay for it all."

Robert Miller-Bakewell, a Merrill Lynch analyst, blaming many large equipment suppliers engaged in sourcing water and treating waste for not being willing to operate in parts of the developing world, before the World Water Day on March 22