Kate Adie

“In Sierra Leone last year there was just the two of us hanging out of a helicopter and, when we were in Bosnia, I drove an armoured vehicle, thousands of miles.”

“I don't sit there and speculate. I'm not that sort of person. It wastes time, actually.”

“People always seem to assume that we have a full, back-up support team - make-up, costume and a driver - but usually, in a war zone, there's only me and the cameraman.”

“I have never been attracted to any kind of violence.”

“I will never retire.”

“My job is to get to the heart of a story, to find out what's really going on; to get it verified and, then, to get it out to as many people as possible as fast as.”

“Up until about 12 years ago we never, ever, wore flak jacket or helmets but now the nastiness has got worse.”

“It wasn't glamorous in my day. In the regions, reporters were seen as such low life that they didn't merit their name in the Radio Times. Now people are interested in being famous. I never gave it a thought.”

“I have no time for the endless nostalgia: 'Oh gosh I used to . . . ' Life is too short; I don't have any time for sitting and saying I miss things. What's the point? Go and do something else.”

“The better the information it has, the better democracy works. Silence and secrecy are never good for it.”

“I keep telling myself to calm down, to take less of an interest in things and not to get so excited, but I still care a lot about liberty, freedom of speech and expression, and fairness in journalism.”

“On the whole, when the unexpected danger happens to you, you're thinking so fast, you're thinking so hard, every bit of you is alive to 'What should I do?' 'What can I do?' There isn't a lot of time for contemplation.”

“I wrote in the book very specifically what I wanted to write about, period, and left it at.”

“When you are covering a life-or-death struggle, as British reporters were in 1940, it is legitimate and right to go along with military censorship, and in fact in situations like that there wouldn't be any press without the censorship.”

“But in the first Gulf war the United Kingdom was not under any threat from Iraq, and is still less so in the second one. Then there is no justification for obstructing freedom of information, particularly as nations have a right to know what their soldiers are being used for.”