Amanda Lindhout

I have watched lives change. I have seen women gain confidence.

Hillary Clinton has a strong and powerful voice regarding ending violence against women and girls.

Somalia is very dangerous, and no one knows that better than I.

A little goes a long way in Somalia: $5 will feed a person there for about two weeks.

Getting on a plane is hard for me, but I do it, because travel is vital to me.

I'm afraid of the dark, but I choose to sleep in the dark. I can fall right to sleep with the lights on. But I want to be someone who can sleep in the dark, so that's the choice that I make.

I never felt an obligation to say every single terrible thing that happened to me.

Friendships that don't fit my life anymore have faded away, and new ones have come in.

I must thank my good friend Nigel Brennan. His strength of character in the midst of extreme hardship inspired me during the darkest days. Despite our separation, he always managed to find small ways to remind me that there are gentlemen in the world, even when I was surrounded by just the opposite.

I would like to especially acknowledge my home community of Calgary, and the people of central Alberta who made my dream of freedom a reality.

Accompanied by an Australian photographer named Nigel Brennan, I'd gone to Somalia to work as a freelance journalist, on a trip that was meant to last only ten days.

War dehumanizes everyone.

After spending 460 days as a hostage, I did emerge a fundamentally changed person. But I think, like everyone does as they grow older and probably wiser, I can look back at my earlier life - my history, my mistakes, the joy I felt as a young woman traveling the world - with some objectivity and even some humor.

The countries with the greatest problems have the kindest people.

The greatest gift you have been given is the gift of your imagination - what do you dream of wanting to do?

Hamdi Ulukaya and Chobani have made the decision to feed 250,000 victims of the Somali famine. Their compassion speaks for itself, and is a shining example of how the business community can have an enormous positive impact on the world.

What a woman is taught, she shares with her family.

I'm not afraid of IED's, bullets, mortars.

I don't only long for the thrill of being in the middle of a war, I must understand it; I must make other people understand.

The same men who are placing all these outrageous restrictions on women's freedoms in southern Somalia - that type of mentality - that's what I had to deal with in captivity.