The most memorable quotes in the Chattanooga Times Free Press for Oct. 18-23:
“Seeing someone you know shot and killed is seeing someone you know shot and killed, whether you are a cop or not. We’ve got the same feelings and heartbreak that others have.”
– Chattanooga Police Sgt. Josh May on the toll taken by gang violence
“If my family was here I’d be in jail. This is a disgrace.”
– Gina Barberee, helping clean up the choked and overgrown Floral Hills Cemetery near Ooltewah
“What’s happening broadly is, we won marriage equality, legally, but we have not yet won it politically or culturally in East Tennessee.”
– Chris Sanders, executive director of the Tennessee Equality Project, after a lesbian married couple protested state paperwork that doesn’t recognize same-sex marriage
“Now I see that I gain nothing from taking away from Hamilton County financially to help Clay County, because you’re in the same mess, just at a different proportion. The funding pie is just too small.”
– Jerry Strong, Clay County, Tenn., school superintendent, who said he is considering joining a lawsuit by Hamilton and other counties over education funding after his county shut down schools over budget issues
“Are we pleased by that? Of course we’re not pleased by that.”
– Hamilton County Schools Superintendent Rick Smith after the district scored the lowest possible grade in test score growth released by the Tennessee Department of Education on Thursday.
“There’s times I don’t want to get up. There’s times I just want to take a gun and blow my brains out.”
– Jennifer Gross-Wrinkle, on her struggles to live and find housing after being turned out of the condemned Superior Creek Lodge in East Ridge.