It’s been a quotable year at the 92nd Street Y. Our guest lecturers left some yummy soundbites stuck in our minds. Here’s a few:

“Bonobos are the sexiest apes.”
—Frans de Waal, October 10, 2005

“The day we turn to journalists for military strategy, this country’s going to hell.”
—Thomas P.M. Barnett, October 23, 2005

“The question is not ‘how’s the war in Iraq going?’ The war ended May 2003. The question now is ‘how’s the peace in Iraq going?’”
—Thomas P.M. Barnett again, October 23, 2005

“Fortunately, monetary theory works at 14,000 feet above sea level.”
—Jeffrey Sachs on his work controlling hyperinflation in Bolivia, October 27, 2005

“Turkey: Why be second-class Europeans, when we can be the leader of the Arab world?”
—Ralph Buultjens, November 6, 2005

“My West Wing equivalent would be the bleary-eyed insomniac surrounded by coffee cups.”
—Gene Sperling, November 17, 2005

“We won the argument but lost all influence over the government.”
—David Hare, December 5, 2005

“Generally, if the statistics are bad ones, they’re pretty much closer to the truth.”
—Elizabeth Economy, referring to China’s government reports, December 4, 2005

“I lose my temper more quickly. I have to—I’m getting old.”
—Harold Bloom, December 12, 2005

2006 promises a whole new slew of quotables with guests such as string theorists Brian Greene and Michio Kaku, ambassadors L. Paul Bremer and Richard Holbrooke, film moguls Bob and Harvey Weinstein, authors Pete Hamill and Tom Wolfe, comedians Carl Reiner and Dick Cavett, poet Seamus Heaney, professor Henry Louis Gates, Jr. and many, many others. See you next year.