Amanda Lindhout quotes:

Hillary Clinton has a strong and powerful voice regarding ending violence against women and girls.

Contemplating Christmas when you are isolated and far from home brings its own unique pain.

Friendships that don't fit my life anymore have faded away, and new ones have come in.

The road to recovery will not always be easy, but I will take it one day at a time, focusing on the moments I've dreamed about for so long.

It was a slow understanding that the lack of education in a country like Somalia creates these huge social problems.

For a while, the world for me was like a set of monkey bars. I swung from one place to the next, sometimes backward, sometimes forward, capitalizing on my own momentum, knowing that at some point my arms... would give out, and I'd fall to the ground.

Hamdi Ulukaya and Chobani have made the decision to feed 250,000 victims of the Somali famine. Their compassion speaks for itself, and is a shining example of how the business community can have an enormous positive impact on the world.

I would like to especially acknowledge my home community of Calgary, and the people of central Alberta who made my dream of freedom a reality.

Accompanied by an Australian photographer named Nigel Brennan, I'd gone to Somalia to work as a freelance journalist, on a trip that was meant to last only ten days.

After spending 460 days as a hostage, I did emerge a fundamentally changed person. But I think, like everyone does as they grow older and probably wiser, I can look back at my earlier life - my history, my mistakes, the joy I felt as a young woman traveling the world - with some objectivity and even some humor.

A little goes a long way in Somalia: $5 will feed a person there for about two weeks.

I made a vow to myself while I was a hostage that if I were lucky enough to live and to get out of Somalia, I would do something meaningful with my life - and specifically something that would be meaningful in the country where I'd lost my freedom.

Christmas was the one time of year when my brothers surfaced at home, when my parents and grandparents congregated to eat my mother's roast turkey.

My faith in human decency was sorely tested at times during my captivity; however, after my release, I am humbly reminded that mankind is inherently good by the tremendous efforts and support of fellow Canadians.

Many, including the Canadian and U.S. governments, try to provide family support while also maintaining a hard line about further fuelling terrorism and hostage-taking through ransom payments ... Still, try telling that to a mother, or a father, or a husband or wife caught in the powerless agony of standing by.

My captors were definitely aware that what they were doing was wrong. It came out in small ways - occasionally through a show of guilt or compassion. One of the boys bought me a gift. Another used to sneak me acetaminophen tablets.

When you see a 14-year-old boy who has never known what peace looks like for a day in his life, there's part of you as a human being that feels some degree, you can say, compassion for the fact that these boys have known war, famine, violence and death from the day they were born.

Getting on a plane is hard for me, but I do it, because travel is vital to me.

I must try desperately to absorb all information I can about the Middle East. I want to excel. I want to speak articulately about the politics of the Middle East and its religion.

You have a responsibility to move your dreams forward, no matter what.

The big-time journalists generally had kidnapping insurance through their news organizations. Usually, it would pay for a crisis response company to help negotiate for a hostage's release. Freelancers most often had none.

I have a general sense of excitement about the future, and I don't know what that looks like yet. But it will be whatever I make it.

It was a slow understanding that my kidnappers really are a product of their environment.

The countries with the greatest problems have the kindest people.

I'm afraid of elevators, because they are an enclosed space, but I get in.

I know firsthand how critical support systems are.

I have watched lives change. I have seen women gain confidence.

I, too, was carrying around my own fate. All the things I couldn't know sat somewhere inside, embroidered into me-maybe not quite fixed to the point of inevitability but waiting, in any event, for a chance to unspool.

With awareness come responsibility and choice.

I've realized that the world is, in essence, full of banana peels - loaded with things that may unwittingly trip an internal wire in my mind, opening a floodgate of fears without warning.

What happened to me in Somalia doesn't define me.

Somalia is very dangerous, and no one knows that better than I.

I went through an extremely trying ordeal, but I never forgot the world outside was a beautiful place.

The book is called 'A House in the Sky' because during the very, very darkest times, that was how I survived. I had to find a safe place to go in my mind where there was no violence being done to my body and where I could reflect on the life I had lived and the life that I still wanted to live.

After being in captivity for so long, I can't begin to describe how wonderful it feels to be home in Canada.

The same men who are placing all these outrageous restrictions on women's freedoms in southern Somalia - that type of mentality - that's what I had to deal with in captivity.

Forgiving is not an easy thing to do.

I think it's the human spirit inside of all of us that has an enormous capacity to survive.

I'm afraid of the dark, but I choose to sleep in the dark. I can fall right to sleep with the lights on. But I want to be someone who can sleep in the dark, so that's the choice that I make.

I'm not afraid of IED's, bullets, mortars.

What a woman is taught, she shares with her family.

Every day I have many choices to make about who I want to be.

In my version of paradise, the air was always cold and the rivers ran with candy.

I swung from one place to the next, sometimes backward, sometimes forward, capitalizing on my own momentum, knowing that at some point my armsâ??or, more accurately, my quivering bank balance, accessed through foreign ATMsâ??would give out, and Iâ??d fall to the ground.

I think that I find a lot of my healing out in the world.

I don't think I'm unusual in that, in my 20s, like many people, I felt invincible.

The same men who are placing all these outrageous restrictions on womenâ??s freedoms in southern Somalia â?? that type of mentality â?? thatâ??s what I had to deal with in captivity.

Being in the dark, there's a real weight to it. It's heavy.

I don't only long for the thrill of being in the middle of a war, I must understand it; I must make other people understand.

We all waited on an afterlife. Only I planned to be alive for mine.

Women in Somalia face almost unimaginable oppression.

Maintaining my dignity is so important for me.

I am so proud to be a Canadian.

I used my captors names every chance I had. It was intentional, a way of reminding them that I saw them, of pegging them, of making them see me in return.