The most memorable quotes in the Chattanooga Times Free Press for March 29-April 3.
“If you couldn’t get DesJarlais in 2014, what makes you think you’re going to get him in 2016?”
— Vanderbilt University political science professor Dr. Bruce Oppenheimer, on news that state Sen. Jim Tracy might seek a rematch in the 2016 Republican primary for the 4th Congressional District
“I wanted to bring this business back to the fundamental doctor-patient relationship.”
— Dr. David C. Redd, a longtime surgeon who opened a free-standing, private-pay surgery clinic on the North Shore
“I hope you realize how many people you sentence to die today.”
— Unidentified protester at the state Capitol in Nashville after the Senate Commerce Committee voted to kill Gov. Bill Haslam’s Insure Tennessee plan
“Why don’t you give it up, a—-?”
— State Sen. Todd Gardenhire, a Commerce Committee member, to another protester who asked him after the vote if he’d be willing to give up his own health insurance
“They got it tore down about 90 percent, and then got up and left it. Anybody that comes in here and tears something down like that and leaves a mess is just making our neighborhood look bad.”
— Vic Chastain, about the mess left behind in his Lupton City neighborhood after a private firm demolished the old R.L. Stowe mill last year and left the rubble lying in place