Lynsey Addario

“I think when I started going to war zones and started covering humanitarian issues, it became a calling because I realized I had a voice, and I can give people without a voice a voice... and now it is something that sits inside of me every day.”

“He spoke Spanish, English, Italian, and just enough of every other language to be able to charm women around the world.”

“I've worked for over 11 years in the Muslim world, and the one thing that I feel like I've learned - who's to say if it's true or not true, it's just my experience - is that men don't like to see really strong, aggressive women in that area of the world.”

“Since Sept. 11, many of the wars of our generation are in the Muslim world. So as a woman, I have access to 50 percent of the population that my male colleagues don't.”

“My strength is looking for composition and light, and I think those things come in the quieter times of war or photographing people affected on the margins of war - civilians, refugees; that is where I really excel.”

“The truth is, the difference between a studio photographer and a photojournalist is the same as the difference between a political cartoonist and an abstract painter; the only thing the two have in common is the blank page. The jobs entail different talents and different desires.”

“For me, it's more about being there, bearing witness to history, bearing witness to what's happening, what our country, the position our country is taking overseas. I want policy-makers to see the fruits of their decisions, basically, and to try and influence foreign policy.”

“As a Western woman in the Middle East, I am often put in a different category. I am sort of like the third sex. I am not treated like a man. I am not treated like a woman. I am just treated like a journalist. That is usually really helpful.”

“When I'm documenting, for example, a story on women in Afghanistan, I will do a huge amount of research and a lot of time on the ground just getting to know the women before I even start shooting.”

“I'm not very religious at all - I was raised Catholic, but probably haven't gone to church since my Holy Communion when I was about 6 or 7.”

“I wanted to make people think, to open their minds, to give them a full picture of what was happening in Iraq so they can decide whether they supported our presence there.”

“For a journalist who covers the Muslim world, we have responsibilities to be familiar with that culture and to know how to respond to that.”

“Where in the world would I rather be than on the front line of history?”

“When I first started out, I really felt like, 'I'm a journalist; I will be respected as a neutral observer.' And I don't feel like that holds true anymore. I don't think people respect journalists the same way they once did.”

“The fact is that trauma and risk taking hadn't become scarier over the years; it had become more normal.”

“As a woman, I have tried to take advantage of the extra access I have in the Muslim world: with Muslim women, for example. Many people underestimate women in that part of the world because, typically, they don't work.”

“As a photographer who is constantly in violent, bloody situations where the instinct is to turn away, I am always trying to figure out how to make people not turn away.”

“I would never think of myself as a role model.”

“The more I photographed Muslim women, the more I was able to metaphorically strip away the burqas and hijabs, and start chipping away at the profound misconceptions that existed in other parts of the world about these women and their culture.”

“I'm a very open person, very self-deprecating. I accept my flaws.”