Rachel Corrie

“I really value words. I really try to illustrate and let people draw their own conclusions.”

“We are protecting civilians. We are unarmed. We are no threat to you. Please do not shoot.”

“Follow your dreams, believe in yourself and don't give up.”

“I look forward to seeing more and more people willing to resist the direction the world is moving in, a direction where our personal experiences are irrelevant, that we are defective, that our communities are not important, that we are powerless, that our future is determined, and that the highest level of humanity is expressed through what we choose to buy at the mall.”

“I am a good, strong word giver; I am a jealous guard of my own secrets. Freedom is the rule; I am hungry for one good thing I can do.”

“When I am an old woman, I will stop trying to look beautiful. I will quit wearing makeup and buying uncomfortable clothes because they look good. Maybe I will take up nudism.”

“Whenever I organize or participate in public protest I get really worried that it will just suck, be really small, embarrassing, and the media will laugh at me. Oftentimes, it is really small and most of the time the media laughs at us.”

“I want to be a lawyer, a dancer, an actress, a mother, a wife, a children's author, a distance runner, a poet, a pianist, a pet store owner, an astronaut, an environmental and humanitarian activist, a psychiatrist, a ballet teacher, and the first woman president.”

“We are all born and someday we'll all die. Most likely to some degree alone. Our aloneness in this world is, maybe not anymore, a thing to mourn.”

“Maybe if people stopped thinking of themselves, and started thinking of the other sides of things, people wouldn't hurt each other.”

“We should be inspired by people... who show that human beings can be kind, brave, generous, beautiful, strong-even in the most difficult circumstances.”

“I feel like I'm witnessing the systematic destruction of a people's ability to survive. It's horrifying.”

“I've had this underlying need to go to a place and meet people who are on the other end of the portion of my tax money that goes to fund the U.S. and other militaries.”

“By Rachel Corrie, aged 10 — 1990I’m here for other children.I’m here because I care.I’m here because children everywhere are suffering and because forty thousand people die each day from hunger.I’m here because those people are mostly children.We have got to understand that the poor are all around us and we are ignoring them.We have got to understand that these deaths are preventable.We have got to understand that people in third world countries think and care and smile and cry just like us.We have got to understand that they dream our dreams and we dream theirs.We have got to understand that they are us. We are them.My dream is to stop hunger by the year 2000.My dream is to give the poor a chance.My dream is to save the 40,000 people who die each day.My dream can and will come true if we all look into the future and see the light that shines there.If we ignore hunger, that light will go out.If we all help and work together, it will grow and burn free with the potential of tomorrow.”

“Sometimes I sit down to dinner with people and I realize there is a massive military machine surrounding us, trying to kill the people I'm having dinner with.”

“I think freedom for Palestine could be an incredible source of hope to people struggling all over the world. I think it could also be an incredible inspiration to Arab people in the Middle East, who are struggling under undemocratic regimes which the U.S. supports.”

“I got a number of very thoughtful responses to the email I sent out last night, most of which I don’t have time to respond to right now. Thanks everyone for the encouragement, questions, criticism. Daniel’s response was particularly inspiring to me and deserves to be shared. The resistance of Israeli Jewish people to the occupation and the enormous risk taken by those refusing to serve in the Israeli military offers an example, especially for those of us living in the United States, of how to behave when you discover that atrocities are being commited in your name. Thank you.”

“Death smells like homemade apple sauce as it cooks on the stove. It is not the strangling sense of illness. It is not fear. It is freedom.”