I think life is always dangerous. Some people get afraid of it. Some people don't go forward. But some people, if they want to achieve their goal, they have to go. They have to move.

If a woman can go to the beach and wear nothing, then why can't she also wear everything?

I've always been a daydreamer, and sometimes in lessons my mind would drift and I'd imagine that on the way home a terrorist might jump out and shoot me on those steps. I wondered what I would do. Maybe I'd take off my shoes and hit him, but then I'd think if I did that there would be no difference between me and a terrorist. It would be better to plead, 'OK, shoot me, but first listen to me. What you are doing is wrong. I'm not against you personally, I just want every girl to go to school.'

I was a girl in a land where rifles are fired in celebration of a son, while daughters are hidden away behind a curtain, their role in life simply to prepare food and give birth to children.

You should believe in your talent and potential. Never lose hope.

I don't know why people have divided the whole world into two groups, west and east. Education is neither eastern nor western. Education is education and it's the right of every human being.

I want to just stay focused on my mission. That is to see every girl get the right to education. And I think this is such an important thing that girls get their right to go to school, and we are losing the potential that these young girls have in this region, like Iraq.