Because that’s the thing about the exact moment when you get somewhere that has required effort: There’s a freeze-frame instant of total fulfillment, when every expectation has been met and the world is perfect.

Forgiving is not an easy thing to do.

I think it's the human spirit inside of all of us that has an enormous capacity to survive.

I'm afraid of elevators, because they are an enclosed space, but I get in.

A little goes a long way in Somalia: $5 will feed a person there for about two weeks.

The same men who are placing all these outrageous restrictions on women’s freedoms in southern Somalia – that type of mentality – that’s what I had to deal with in captivity.

I used my captors names every chance I had. It was intentional, a way of reminding them that I saw them, of pegging them, of making them see me in return.