I think there is limits to the assumption that wherever you are, the situation in a way tells you how to behave.

I knew of no instruction manual for reaching a higher level of humanity and a greater wisdom. But I felt intuitively that laughter was the beginning of wisdom, as is was indispensable for survival.

For me the very important thing was never to forget that they had no right to have me there, that my duty was to escape and that I needed to get back to my family and to my children no matter what. And that I could not accept to just see them as an authority, that I had to always keep in mind that I had to rebel and to keep my distance and to protect my soul because the core of the problem is dignity.

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.

Before I was abducted, I think that happiness was related to success. Nowadays happiness is related, for me, to rest, peace, serenity.

I realized that I hated politics. I mean that is you know... I realized being in the jungle that what I had thought I could do, I mean changing the way politics were being done in Colombia, was not possible the way I wanted to do it - by confronting, by denouncing.

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.