Ingrid Betancourt Quotes

When bombing is going on, you see a lot of people screaming around you and you can't do anything if you're small. You just want to break out of that and be strong.

Rape is the most humiliating thing that can be done to you; it's the most vulnerable that you can be. But once I realized that, I became a stronger person and faced all my fears.

My father died when I was seven. I guess I am interested in fatherlessness as a metaphor for vulnerability and unprotectedness. Being on your own in the world in a way you're not quite ready for, ever.

I can't even say what my greatest fear is because I, I can't even imagine. Being without my family... I can't even say it because it makes me cry.

I woke up and all I could see was Iraqis standing all around me, looking down upon me. I knew at that moment something terrible had happened and I wasn't in the right place.

For me, my awakening came when I was kidnapped.

The world breaks everyone and afterward many are strong at the broken places. But those that will not break it kills. It kills the very good and the very gentle and the very brave impartially. If you are none of these you can be sure it will kill you too but there will be no special hurry.

When you lose a parent at ten years old, the world seems like a much scarier place. It makes complete sense to me that I took survival courses when I was a teenager and started going to war zones as a reporter. I didn't ever want to be taken advantage of, and I wanted to be able to take care of those around me.

Once you know how completely and suddenly the earth can open up at your feet and the worst can happen, it also, paradoxically, leaves you more afraid of everything else.

After the tragic events of Manchester, with the senseless loss of life and the fear that came from knowing my family was unsafe and that I was completely powerless to protect them, I went to a very dark place with no tools to handle the feelings that came along with the devastation of the attack.

How many more times do we have to come to terms with death before we find safety?

This wasn't the first time I'd woken up as a captive. It wasn't even the second. I so needed to reevaluate my life choices.

I don't want to be a victim. I don't want to disappear into the darkness.

When my stepfather died, I just kind of fell apart. I felt pretty vulnerable, like there literally could be no tomorrow.

I do not believe in the beauty of falling.

Peeta and I had adjoining cells in the capitol. We're very familiar with each other's screams.

I pull the sleeping bag up to his chin and kiss his forehead, not for the audience, but for me. Because I'm so grateful that he's here, not dead by the stream as I'd thought. So glad I don't have to face Cato alone.

From now on the enemy is more clever than you. From now on the enemy is stronger than you. From now on you are always about to lose.

When you've lost everything, you've got nothing to lose.

Darkness does this. It finds all the places you are hiding in. It finds all the things you are holding onto tightly and makes you let go.

The stuff I write about is pretty universal, the things my closest friends and I talk about - our anxiety about being here on this scary planet, during these scary times, as vulnerable as kittens, having lost so many people I couldn't live without.

Everything had been stripped of deceptions, that time. And that time I was afraid of everything.

Together we understood what terror was: you're not human anymore. You're a shadow. You slip out of your own skin, like molting, shedding your own history and your own future, leaving behind everything you ever were or wanted to believed in. You know you're about to die. And it's not a movie and you aren't a hero and all you can do is whimper and wait.

She gave me this look – she might have been watching from a lifeboat as the ship went down. Or maybe it was the other way around.

Zoe readied her arrows. Grover lifted his pipes. Thalia raised her shield and I noticed a tear running down her cheek. Suddenly it occurred to me: this had happened to her before.She had been cornered on Half- Blood Hill. She'd willingly given her life for her friends. But this time she couldn't save us.