A Few Words on 1995

It was the Year of the Newt, according to numerous sources--a year of partisan battle, hot words and impenetrable bulletins from the Congressional Budget Office. Or it was the Season of Simpson, the almost-silent man at the end of that long table crammed with ludicrously loquacious lawyers.

It was the Age of Serbia, Croatia and Bosnia. It was the Time of the Nonstop Talk Show. It was the Dawn of the Age of the Aquarian Internet, with World Wide Web pages multiplying faster than electronic bunnies. It was also the time of Hideo Nomo and Hugh Grant, Alanis Morissette and Selena, Willie Brown and Richard Holbrooke, Barbie redux, “Babe” and “Friends,” white go-go boots, “voluntary buyouts,” tattoos, golf and other phenomena, novelties and retreads, important and otherwise. It was the epoch of Jupiter. Hey, it wasn’t the Gay Nineties.

All in all, the past 12 months seemed to present more than their fair share of sex, violence and weepy celebrities. But to really comprehend ‘95, listen to some of its most memorable utterances.

Listen, and wish it fondest riddance.

* “I’ll miss being recognized and being fawned over. Now the only unrequited love I’ll have is from my beagle.”

--Rep. Dan Glickman of Kansas, departing Congress after 18 years

“I do not feel his presence beside me, only his absence.”

--Edmund Morris, biographer, on the ailing Ronald Reagan

“I can’t think of anything that gets better with aging. I’m not mellower; I’m not less angry; I’m not less self-critical; I’m not less tenacious.”

--Paul Newman, contemplating life at 69

“I seem to know what’s interesting to my audience everywhere except L.A., where only Mexicans are listening.”

--Howard Stern

“It’s what somebody always used to tell me, the biggest bitches get the best houses.”

--San Francisco society column regular Frances Bowes, showing her new Sonoma house to readers of Town & Country magazine

“If combat means living in a ditch, females have biological problems staying in a ditch for 30 days because they get infections . . . males are biologically driven to go out and hunt giraffes.”

--House Speaker Newt Gingrich

“No one ever went broke underestimating the sexual satisfaction of the American people.”

--Walter Kirn, reviewing Robert James Waller’s “Border Music”

“I identify with Babe Ruth. He was a little overweight, and he struck out a lot. But he hit a lot of home runs because he went to bat.”

--President Clinton, urging an end to the baseball strike

“I had the typical L.A. experience today. I sat up to my waist in water in my earthquake-damaged home, watching the O.J. trial on the TV I stole during the Rodney King riots.”

--Jay Leno

“There is no doubt in my mind. I am very fit for society.”

--Mass murderer Colin Ferguson

“We told them a week ago they could go in the lunchroom. I guess we forgot to tell them they had to come out once in a while.”

--Seattle Mariners Manager Lou Piniella on the appetites of his replacement players

“She has $250 million, Mama!”

--Dennis Rodman, explaining to his mother why he dated Madonna

“I have lied in good faith.”

--French politician Bernard Tapie, after his sworn alibi crumbled in court; Tapie was accused of fixing a match involving the Marseilles soccer club he once owned

“Sometimes when I’m flying over the Alps, I think, ‘That’s like all the cocaine I sniffed.” “

--Elton John

“The only time you don’t need a prenuptial is if he has no children . . . and he’s got a bad cough and a walker.”

--Ivana Trump

“Postal officials say you don’t have to lick the Nixon stamp. You just wipe the sweat off the front and apply it to the back.”

--Dennis Miller

“The reason Japanese people are so short and have yellow skins is because they have eaten nothing but fish and rice for 2,000 years. . . . If we eat McDonald’s hamburgers and potatoes for 1,000 years, we will become taller, our skin become white and our hair blonde.”

--Den Fujita, president of Japanese McDonald’s, in his book “Behind the Arches”

“I can be pretty hot, pretty passionate. I like to do my cool thing, sometimes. To be an American male and not be cool is unheard of.”

--Actor Laurence Fishburne

“I thought, ‘Oh boy, he’s going to have a good lawn.’ ”

--Donna Linder, on the quantities of fertilizer she saw her neighbor, Oklahoma City bombing suspect Terry L. Nichols, spreading two days after the attack

“You can’t talk to anybody. Prostitutes are all over the street. You walk by them, you’re bagged.”

--Joey Buttafuoco, on his arrest for soliciting an undercover Los Angeles policewoman

“He is scarier than my wife when I come home drunk.”

--Ryutaro Hashimoto, Japan’s minister of international trade and industry, describing his American negotiating counterpart, Mickey Kantor

“It’s tough. You just sit there all day. I don’t know how O.J. does it. I’ve got a lot of respect for the dude.”

--Deion Sanders, Cincinnati Reds outfielder on the three days he had to spend in court on misdemeanor charges stemming from a confrontation with a security guard

“[Gov. Pete] Wilson is the Michael Dukakis of the GOP--without the passion.”

--Arianna Huffington

“Those white boys got taken, fair and square.”

--Former Assembly Speaker Willie Brown, on Assembly Republicans after he maneuvered to appoint his own successor

“I think most of us learned some time ago that if you don’t like the president’s position on a particular issue, you simply need to wait a few weeks.”

--Democratic Rep. David Obey on President Clinton’s budget

“I never play the television. It’s a curse, you know, television.”

--ABC News anchor Peter Jennings

“The Bible is action-packed. The Koran is action-packed. Even Buddha had a few moments of suspense in his life. Yet when we make action movies now, we’re considered moneymaking machines with no esoteric worth, and that’s not true at all. There’s a lot of artistry that goes into what we do.”

--Sylvester Stallone

“I learned ages ago that money cannot make you happy. And I realized that unless you have money, you can’t make that statement.”

--Barry Gordy

“This is the biggest thing since New Coke.”

--Richard Schneider, a computer store customer, on the launch of Microsoft’s Windows 95

“Talking is more tiring than I thought.”

--Newt Gingrich, after his 25-city book tour

“Do I let a group of power mongering men with short penises tell me what to do? Well, I don’t know. What am I supposed to do? . . . These men have a real problem.”

--Former State Assembly Speaker Doris Allen, on proponents of her recall election, which was successful

“He may speak Japanese, but the guy sure can eat Italian.”

--Dodger Manager Tommy Lasorda on pitcher Hideo Nomo

“I want that dude Cochran.”

--Tobarios Lawson, 18-year-old murder suspect, following the Simpson verdicts

“I do not like this word bomb. It is not a bomb. It is a device which is exploding.”

--Jacques Le Blanc, France’s ambassador to New Zealand, on French underground nuclear tests

“What on earth is that [gay fiction]? Does that mean the book only hangs out with other books?”

--Gore Vidal

“What, you are going to keep me locked up in Dayton, Ohio? I am not a priest, you know!”

--Serbian President Slobodan Milosevic

“One problem with people who have no vices is that they’re pretty sure to have some annoying virtues.”

--Elizabeth Taylor

“I think it was absolutely stupid. I’ve said several times, for the price they paid to rent the car, they could have had a girl.”

--Adm. Richard C. Macke, commander of U.S. forces in the Pacific, commenting on three

American servicemen accused of raping a 12-year-old girl in Okinawa; following the remark,

Macke was forced to take early retirement

“Six months ago, the surgeon general said we should teach masturbation in school. I said to myself, ‘Just my luck! Thirty years after I graduated, they think of something I could have made an A in.’ ”

--Political consultant James Carville

“It’s amazing how quickly a message can travel from the right buttock to the lower base of the brain.”

--Kevin O’Neill, Tennessee basketball coach, on the effectiveness of benching players

“I was aware but not in a position to do anything about it. There were three of us in the marriage. That made it a bit crowded.”

--Princess Diana

“After the underwear ad came out, all these perverts were calling me on the phone and having their little fun. I was getting real paranoid. People were always looking at me rudely.”

--Joel West, the Calvin Klein model in the spread-eagle, only-in-his-Calvins pose on why he quit New York and moved back to Iowa

“It’s really hard going from the top of the food chain to the bottom of the food chain.”

--Marine Lance Cpl. Zachary Mayo, on surviving 36 hours in the shark-infested Indian Ocean

“I’m looking forward to the most fascinating experience in life, which is dying. You’ve got to approach your dying the way you live your life--with curiosity, with hope, with fascination, with courage and with the help of your friends.”

--Timothy Leary