As the only woman, I was able to sit with the officers in front, with a glass of vodka in one hand and a cucumber in the other. That's how I went to my first war.

If my name had not been cleared, it would have been difficult, perhaps impossible, to continue as a journalist.

There is no journalist without opinions, and there's no real objectivity, but we can strive toward it.

There is nothing I would change - to change it I would have had to write a totally different book.

I was thinking, there are 5 million people, and I am just one of those 5 million. In the build-up to the war you see children playing in the street, and you think, ah, I'm going to be okay.

I always try to describe the situation just as it is. I try to find sentences that I believe tell the story best. Even my articles are more literary than ordinary news stories.

Being a war correspondent, and having covered four wars, I know that wars very seldom solve things.