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Best Quotes of 2011

7 min read

"She could sell eggs to the chicken that laid them." 
– Vicki Taylor of Pine Bluff, speaking of Sissy Jones, founder of Sissy’s Log Cabin jewelry store

"If you can’t forgive, you can’t be forgiven. And that’s something I had to learn."
– Sissy Jones, discussing her marriage to husband Murphy Jones, their divorce and, in 1988, remarriage

"When you give a gift, you want to give something that you hope greatly enriches and transforms other lives. So I guess it’s that potential at transformation that made me feel like it was the right thing to do." 
– Alice Walton, on why the Walton family decided to build Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art in Bentonville

"He has given so much to people over the years that we didn’t feel it was appropriate to really do anything other than support him." 
– Steve Jonsson, vice president and general manager of KABZ-FM, 103.7 "The Buzz," discussing the station’s decision to hold open a job for Tommy Smith, who entered rehab after being arrested for DWI, possession of a controlled substance, leaving the scene of an accident and related charges

"I think the entire experience was healing. I was so broken by the political viciousness of Whitewater, and my family was so wounded and people I loved were so hurt, that being incarcerated was a healing. It changed who I was." 
– Susan McDougal, a Whitewater figure later pardoned by President Bill Clinton, on her experience in federal prison

"Clients can be annoying or high maintenance. Life’s too short. … If you have to put up with them, you might as well get paid for it." 
– John Wesley Hall, Little Rock criminal defense attorney, on choosing to represent defendants based on whether or not they can pay him

"Well, I’ll tell you what you’re required to do. You’re required to have this damn deposition. … Am I going to have to send a marshal out there to conduct this deposition?" 
– U.S. District Judge Bill Wilson to Rose Law Firm attorney Ryan Solomon in one of four telephone conferences in which he repeatedly ordered Solomon’s client, USA Drug scion Jason LaFrance, to sit for a scheduled deposition in November

"Counsel has no problems with going to the bathroom in the outdoors, but he is not about to do so in the affluent Edgehill neighborhood which has private security on patrol and which would subject him to the risk of arrest for indecent exposure." 
– Little Rock attorney Patrick James, in a footnote to his motion for sanctions against Solomon and LaFrance, who eventually barred him from even using the restroom in LaFrance’s $2.5 million home, where LaFrance was ultimately deposed

"We’ve not spent any money on ourselves. It’s all gone to pay off debt." 
– Bonnie Harvey, who along with her husband, Little Rock businessman Ed Harvey, was embroiled in a $1.7 million collection lawsuit with Metropolitan National Bank after selling Continental Express Inc. in 2008

"I never considered myself to be a greedy person." 
– Kevin Lewis, the former Little Rock lawyer who in December was sentenced to 121 months in federal prison for a scam involving fake special improvement district bonds that cost Arkansas banks some $50 million

"Now that we’ve done it, we have a whole new attitude when we’re shopping. We’re in a different stage of life. We’re not in a collecting stage of life; we’re in a getting-rid-of stage." 
– Bill Carlton, who with his wife, Pat, decided to have an enormous estate sale as they moved from a 10,000-SF home in Little Rock to one that was somewhat smaller

"I just think the best thing is to be honest and get the information out there. I am not saying you have to put out a press release saying, ‘Look, we messed up.’ But at the same time, it’s better to control the message, and you can’t control the message if you try to sweep it under a rug. And if you don’t tell the truth, it’s always going to come back, and then it’s going to be a whole lot worse." 
– Leslie Taylor, associate vice chancellor of communications and marketing for the University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences, discussing crisis communications

"It was something I loved from the first time I did it." 
– Lu Hardin, the former University of Central Arkansas president, describing his addiction to slot machines, which led him into debt and ultimately to crime, although not to prison

"Lu Hardin has already suffered substantially as a result of his offense. Hardin and his family have suffered severe public criticism through newspaper, radio and television coverage. Although the media had every right to report abuse of public trust and certainly anything relating to misconduct by public officials, this reporting has had a devastating effect on Hardin and his family." 
– Defense attorney Chuck Banks, in a memorandum in which he successfully pleaded with U.S. District Judge James Moody not to send his client to prison

"I do say to Lu Hardin this: You can begin again." 
– Steve Clark, president and CEO of the Fayetteville Chamber of Commerce, who was convicted of fraud for using a state credit card for personal gain when he was Arkansas Attorney General

"Many of these people I’ve taken care of are my friends. I couldn’t just say goodbye to them all without trying to explain why I could no longer be their doctor." 
– Dr. Bruce Murphy on arranging town meetings to tell patients why he had to give up his medical license to become CEO and administrator of Arkansas Heart Hospital in Little Rock

"It’s so easy to see how he’s been so successful at getting people to give him money. He has a great personality and is larger than life when it comes to oratory skills." 
– Phillip Tappan of Little Rock, financial victim and former college buddy of convicted oil-and-gas scammer Jeff Rand

"Tell me what I need to know and don’t lie to me." 
– Heath Abshure, Arkansas Securities Commissioner on the two fundamental investor rights his office protects

"We knew that it was going to be very, very difficult for us to make it another generation. There were getting to be too many cousins." 
– R.E.L. "Bobby" Wilson V of Memphis on the sale of Lee Wilson & Co., the Mississippi County agri empire founded by his namesake great-grandfather in 1886

"That’s where I’m at. I’m not going to change my mind. He’s already bilked too many good men. I am not going to back down." 
– Ron Crawford, president of Maumelle’s Southland Metals on his pursuit of legal punishment for Heber Springs businessman Joe Blankenship

"It’s impossible for me to trust city leaders who tell me they need $31 million a year in order to pay an $8 million bill. I can do math." 
– Pulaski County Circuit Judge Wendell Griffen, explaining part of his opposition to the sales tax increase that Little Rock voters approved in September  

"I lost my job. Well, really, I lost 30 years of my life, because that’s how long it took me to get where I was." 
– Joyce Judy, former president of Arkansas Employees Federal Credit Union, in a statement to U.S. District Judge Leon Holmes, who sentenced her to 26 months in federal prison for stealing $500,000 from a credit union customer in order to invest in what turned out to be an international scam

"I don’t think it had anything to do with protecting rights of authors or creators of anything. Stupid plus greed equals Righthaven." 
– Marc Randazza, a Las Vegas attorney who defended against copyright enforcement company Righthaven LLC of Las Vegas, in which Little Rock-owned Stephens Media had invested

"Two hours and $96.06 later, I wish you and yours a wonderful afternoon but not before telling you that the woman in front of me is buying three bottles of Dr. Tichenor’s and I swear I ain’t made none of this up." 
– Jack Shock, chairman of the Communications Department at Harding University, concluding a play-by-play account of his experience buying a battery at the auto service center at the Wal-Mart in Searcy that he posted on his Facebook page

"Success is failure turned inside out – The silver tint of the clouds of doubt, 
And you never can tell how close you are, It may be near when it seems so far, 
So stick to the fight when you’re hardest hit – It’s when things seem worst that you must not quit."
– Will Overton, reading from an unattributed poem at the funeral of his father, convicted former stockbroker Warren Overton of Little Rock

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