Have you ever thought that war is a madhouse and that everyone in the war is a patient?

The more democratic and open a society is, the more it's exposed to terrorism. The more a country is free, not governed by a police regime, the more it risks hijackings or massacres like the ones that took place for many years in Italy and Germany and other parts of Europe.

But here's what I've learned in this war, in this country, in this city: to love the miracle of having been born.

It brought back to mind the injustice I spoke of, the solitude that oppresses women intent on defending their own destinies, their own dreams, their own mistakes.

I am an atheist, and if an atheist and a pope think the same things, there must be something true. There must be some human truth that is beyond religion.

A lot of women ask themselves why they should bring a child into the world? So that it will be hungry, so that it will be cold, so that it will be betrayed and humiliated, so that it will be slaughtered by war or disease? They reject the hope that its hunger will be satisfied, its cold warmed, that loyalty and respect will accompany it through life, that it will be a devote a life to the effort to eliminate war and disease.

[Indira Gandhi] answered cautiously at first. Then she opened up like a flower and the conversation flowed along without obstacles, in mutual sympathy.