Whatever you could do with your hands was important because it kept you in a motion of being able to produce something, and producing something kept you balanced in a way.

I no longer knew whether it was raindrops or my own tears that were flowing down my cheeks, and I hated to have to drag along this relic of a sniveling child.

In this condition of the most devastating humiliation, I still possessed the most precious of liberties, that no-one could take away from me: that of deciding who I wanted to be.

In Colombia today we have 16% of the population, which is a very small amount of the population owning 90% of the land and 20 years ago it wasn't like that.

I was discovering that the most precious gift someone can give us is time, because what gives time its value is death.

I think that for example as a prisoner of course I was pressured to become very submissive and in a way the syndrome of Stockholm is when you shift position and then you become like you're supposed to act, which is accepting the authority of those who have abducted you.

Hostages want to survive - they are very focused on their own little view of things.