JANINE DI GIOVANNI

Human memory is short and terribly fickle.

I did not read newspapers until I became a reporter.

I know being pregnant and giving birth is the most wonderful thing on Earth. I know that after you have a baby, there is a sense of addiction, a need to have another. It's biological.

Every time I went to the doctor when I was in my twenties, he repeated the same thing to me: don't wait too long to have children.

Any protester knows that the only way activism works is to get the people on your side.

I spent a good part of the nineties roaming the Earth writing about conflict. It was very grueling. I was beginning to find this way of life was, wow, addictive and deeply meaningful.

Nonviolence worked in Serbia, and it can work in other countries seeking their freedom.

I often think I am a better person because I lived for many years of my life with a flashlight. I have developed skills I did not think were possible - bathing with a cup of water by candlelight, for instance, and writing a story with a headlamp on.

For the first five years of Luca's life, I desperately wanted to be a good mother and not to pass on this trauma and darkness that his father and I had experienced, but there's a danger of suffocating your kids, too.

Stockholm is surely an urban planner's dream. Everything works. Everything looks good.

Every time the Catholic Church takes one step forward, it seems to take one giant step back.

I never set out to be a journalist. I wanted to be a humanitarian doctor like Albert Schweitzer, working in Africa.

Sibling rivalry was, and still is to this day, rampant in my family. We were all competing for my parents' divided attention.

I'm not sure that finding a husband at university made me any less of a feminist or an academic. I still soaked up Susan Faludi; I still read Doris Lessing. But I did it at the same time I met someone who I felt was my soulmate.

The fact is, feminism is not what it used to be.

In the aftermath of any war or genocide, healing and reconciliation are ultimate aspirations.

Hats, giant shades and 60-plus sunblock are part of my summer repertoire. I don't want wrinkles, but it's skin cancer I truly fear.

Easter is meant to be a symbol of hope, renewal, and new life.

In Iraq during the days of Saddam, I had a government minder who followed me everywhere, reported on my activities.

It's always disappointing to come across phony do-gooders. And it's easy to scoff at celebrities working in war zones.

During war time, when people were injured, I was really frustrated I did not become a doctor. It's painful not being able to save people, witnessing their pain.

In Paris, where I live, the inner neighborhoods are only available to the white elite. The poor and dispossessed are shuffled out to suburbs and never seen.

Occupy Wall Street was a disorganized movement without a clear focus and power base - essential in any successful revolution - but the message was clear: the divisions between those who are fortunate enough to enjoy city living as opposed to those who find it unbearable are too wide.

There is a romantic, often misguided, misconception among the British that life in France is akin to life in Paradise.

Lake Como has always been a magnet for the elite.