Ingrid Betancourt
After six years without seeing one, I love just seeing a smile - every smile I see gives me hope.Collection: Smile
We can't continue with a justice of vengeance. Peace will require us to accept a certain degree of impunity; it's inevitable.Collection: Peace
The relationship with time changes when you're captive.Collection: Relationship
The only thing I've settled in my mind is that I want to forgive, and forgiveness comes with forgetting.Collection: Forgiveness
Forgiveness is a very personal and intimate thing. Forgiveness is not something that you can speak for others because it includes not only your desire and will, your reflection and intellect, but also your emotions.Collection: Forgiveness
I never say no to an ice cream.
Reconciliation is a decision that you take in your heart.
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.
You need tremendous spirituality to stop yourself falling into the abyss.
Reconciliation is a national decision that has to be debated and a consensus made among Colombians.
When you have a chain around your neck, you have to keep your head down and try to accept your fate without succumbing entirely to humiliation, without forgetting who you are.
I continue to aspire to serve Colombia as president.
I didn't want to be a number. I didn't want to be an object.
I don't want to be submerged by depression.
It's not easy to talk about things that are still hurting.
I have to forget in order to find peace in my soul and be able to forgive.
I love Colombia's military. I love my country.
I continue with the illusion of serving Colombia. Only God knows if it were to be from the presidency.
During my captivity, I felt abandoned by everyone apart from my family and supporters, because there was no part of the political spectrum that would want me released.
I carry the voices of all my family within me, and they were with me there in the jungle.
More than a victim, I am a survivor of a dehumanization process.
In a kidnapping, you leave behind a lot of your baggage, like arrogance and stubbornness.
France is my home; you are my family. I am carrying all of you in my heart.
I owe everything to France.
I have shed many tears of pain and indignation.
We have to be aware of our fragilities as human beings - when we see cruelty, to understand that in certain conditions, we could be cruel, too.
You don't master your fear. You're not able to say, 'I'm not going to be scared.' But what you can do is say, 'OK, I'm very very scared, but I have to do this and this and this.'
I want to tell President Sarkozy - and through him, all the French people - that they were our support, our light.
The voice of the Holy Father was like a light.
I want to serve my country, but not necessarily in the political arena.
I was in chains all the time, 24 hours a day, for three years. I tried to wear those chains with dignity, even if I felt that it was unbearable.
I know that I have to give testimony about all the things I lived, but I need time.
I was forbidden to talk to my fellow hostages.
I had this belief that I couldn't just accept to be treated as an object. It was a problem of dignity.
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.
When you lose your freedom, you are alone with your emotions and reactions... you can see, for example, the bad reactions you have in front of others or the way you could be dismissive or harsh.
I am not irresponsible.
In the jungle, every day is like the other. So you need to have a special discipline to make things different and to keep in your memory the dates and the days. And I think that's something that's very important when you are held hostage.
I think that the worst thing is realizing that mankind - that - that human beings can be so horrible to other human beings.
You are a free woman, and then you become a prisoner, and you receive all kinds of orders. Sit here, stand there. That's it. You just, you don't have the possibility of even moving to take your bag without asking for permission.
I lived for nearly seven years with the awareness that death was my everyday companion.
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 think that women are peacemakers by genetics, because we are the ones who stay at home and because we are the ones who suffer with the aftermath of war.
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.
In Colombia, women are a huge factor for reconciliation. I have seen many strong women advocating for negotiations. I remember when the paramilitary were active, there were women close to the paramilitary asking for negotiations.
It's easy when you have suffered to feel the link with what others have gone through.
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.
A novel - it's also a way of attacking subjects that you cannot confront in the eye.
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.
In the jungle, faith also became something very real; it helped me to understand what was happening to me and changed my questions.