NOTABLE QUOTABLES

“In the past, we’d been talking about that it appears maybe there are a million people that view the parade in person. We’re not backing away from that number.”

-- Richard Luehrs, president of the Newport Beach Chamber of Commerce, on the number of people who watched this year’s Christmas Boat Parade

“I’ve been working on staying solid and I had [two] turnovers in the first 38 minutes. Then I had two turnovers in the last two minutes that killed us. I think I played well, except for those last two turnovers. But that’s what counted at the end was those two turnovers.”

-- Aaron Fitzgerald, UC Irvine’s senior point guard, after a two-point loss to Loyola

“A lot of people, even if they have problems, set them aside for the holidays. We just have fun here.”

-- James Cochran, a 17-year-old junior at Back Bay High School, who played Santa in the school’s holiday skit

“It was really fun this morning. It’s been getting bigger all day. I’ve lived here for 25 years, my whole life, and I’ve never seen it like this before. It’s a west swell, and usually the big swells we get are south swells.”

-- Lee Hernandez, Newport Beach surfer, during last week’s big swell as he stood on the sand near Newport Pier

“It’s really good, dude. It’s really good. We’ve got good waves and good conditions. We haven’t had size like this in quite a while. This summer was pretty dry.”

-- Todd Martin, Costa Mesa surfer, reacting enthusiastically to the big west swell

“This is an area of the city that is not real heavily involved in city matters, but they care about traffic. Most of the people here haven’t heard of Greenlight.”

-- Phil Arst, Greenlight spokesman, on residents of Newport Coast