Ingrid Betancourt

“I studied political science at the Ecole de Sciences Politiques in Paris.”

“More than a victim, I am a survivor of a dehumanization process.”

“A novel - it's also a way of attacking subjects that you cannot confront in the eye.”

“I lived for nearly seven years with the awareness that death was my everyday companion.”

“I want to serve my country, but not necessarily in the political arena.”

“At first, I didn't want to accept that I had been abducted. I kept thinking, 'Next week, I'll be freed.'”

“In the free world, your days pass very quickly because you have so many things to do, and you're in control of your life.”

“These years after my liberation were years of reconstruction, and I think I made the right decisions... I mean, I lost everything: my life; my father died; I didn't know anything about my children.”

“I called my party the Green Oxygen party because Colombians were choking.”

“The relationship with time changes when you're captive.”

“Like in every peace process, and especially in Colombia, there all kinds of problems that will come through. Not only is the process by itself very complicated but it has lots of underground complications.”

“Sometimes you need other people to embody situations so that you can talk about things that for you are important. And I think that being able to hope for the future is what builds in us the strength to just get rid of things that, in the past, can hurt.”

“The thing is that war is the opposite of negotiation. It's when you cannot negotiate, when you cannot talk, when you cannot reach agreements that then you have war.”

“You need tremendous spirituality to stop yourself falling into the abyss.”

“Living in a jungle is not something easy; it's not something that you just adapt yourself to. And I think that in my case, I didn't want to adapt.”

“I don't want to be submerged by depression.”

“In captivity, one loses every way of acting over little details which satisfy the essentials of life. Everything has to be asked for: permission to go to the toilet, permission to ask a guard something, permission to talk to another hostage - to brush your teeth, use toilet paper, everything is a negotiation.”

“I know that I have to give testimony about all the things I lived, but I need time.”

“The only thing I've settled in my mind is that I want to forgive, and forgiveness comes with forgetting.”

“I have shed many tears of pain and indignation.”