Amanda Lindhout Quotes

My confidence came from the way I grew up, and I'm grateful for it.

It's difficult to put into words what freedom feels like. You only know what freedom feels like if you know what it feels like to not be free.

I am so proud to be a Canadian.

Sometimes it's nice for people not to know anything about me.

It's only your body that's suffering, and you are not your body. The rest of you is fine.

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

Travel was good for my anxious soul. Which is not to say that I relaxed completely. When

The greatest gift you have been given is the gift of your imagination - what do you dream of wanting to do?

By concentrating on what I was grateful for, I was able to stave off despair.

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

writing it helped me to believe it. It staked some claim on the truth.

Women in Somalia face almost unimaginable oppression.

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.

Maintaining my dignity is so important for me.

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.

Somalia is an important story in the world, and it needed to be told.

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

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

It was a lesson the world had already taught me and was teaching me still. You don't know what's possible until you actually see it.

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

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

I never felt an obligation to say every single terrible thing that happened to me.

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

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

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

The countries with the greatest problems have the kindest people.

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

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

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.

With awareness come responsibility and choice.

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

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

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.

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

There was a fine line between holding steady and dipping into despair.

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

Dark Star Safari,

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

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

Nothing had changed and so had everything.

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

Forgiving is not an easy thing to do.

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.

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

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

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