Amanda Lindhout Quotes

I was set free because my greatest fear had been realized, and I still had a daughter who I adored, and I had an old typewriter and a big idea. And so rock bottom became a solid foundation on which I rebuilt my life.

Life ceases to be so oppressive: we are free to give our own lives meaning and purpose, free to redeem our suffering by making something of it.

There's a great Albert Camus quote: 'The only way to deal with an unfree world is to become so absolutely free that your very existence is an act of rebellion.' When I first re-emerged, I was embarrassed to walk down the street. People would come up and say, 'I heard you were dead!' But I had to remind myself that a lot of the stuff I went through was pretty brutal. I'm definitely thankful that some of the rough patches are behind me.

When someone tells me about Malala, the girl who was shot by the Taliban - that's my definition for her - I don't think she's me. Now I don't even feel as if I was shot. Even my life in Swat feels like a part of history or a movie I watched. Things change. God has given us a brain and a heart which tell us how to live.

No one who has lived even for a fleeting moment for something other than life in its conventional sense and has experienced the exaltation that this feeling produces can then renounce his new freedom so easily.

When I look back over my life it's almost as if there was a plan laid out for me - from the little girl who was so passionate about animals who longed to go to Africa and whose family couldn't afford to put her through college. Everyone laughed at my dreams. I was supposed to be a secretary in Bournemouth.

I nearly died three times in 2008, and when you go through those experiences, you realize that you're blessed every day that you wake up. My world changed, my life changed, and with the help of my wife Jane, I was able to survive.

My grandmother, who passed away at the beginning of November, had a core adage in her life that 'life is not about what happens to you but about what you do with what happens to you.' She recently had been cajoling me and challenging me to do more with my life. To lead more of a purposefully public life.

The choice is yours: Do you want to exist, or do you want to live?

Work was always necessary to survive. Then I decided the goal should be to survive without working. But now I have much more work than I had before. Hunting for freedom, I've found the real prison. but at least it's a prison I've chosen for myself.

I remember promising myself that should I live I would prove myself deserving of life.

I grew up in a sad, depressed place. I got out. Poetry saved my life.

Nobody appreciates deliverance like those who've nearly been destroyed.

It's been stress and drama for a long time now, man. So much has happened. I got shot five times by some dudes who were trying to rub me out. But God is great. He let me come back. But, when I look at the last few years, it's not like everybody just did me wrong. I made some mistakes. But I'm ready to move on.

I could have easily gone down the wrong path and dropped out of school, but I was given a second chance.

You just decide what your values are in life and what you are going to do, and then you feel like you count, and that makes life worth living. It makes my life meaningful.

I've been through some very difficult stages in my life, but I wouldn't change anything.

In my life I had no other choice than to become a strong person.

With a goose-quill and a few sheets of paper, I mock myself of the universe. They say I am the son of a courtesan; it may be so, but I have the heart of a King. I live free, I enjoy myself, I can call myself happy.

'Growing Stronger' emerged from a need to relate my life experiences as well as my constant struggle to prevail each day, and as a reminder to myself of the importance of never giving up.

One of the things that always comes up in my writing is the search for freedom, especially in women. I always write about women who are marginalized, who have no means or resources and somehow manage to get out of those situations with incredible strength - and that is more important than anything.

Very few men can fall as far as I have and come back. People see me and it's like they've seen a ghost, like I'm back from the dead.

The truth is that at age 19, I was a teenage mother living alone with my daughter in a trailer and struggling to keep us afloat on my way to a divorce. And I knew then that I was going to have to work my way up and out of that life if I was going to give my daughter a better life and a better future, and that's what I've done.

If I take death into my life, acknowledge it, and face it squarely, I will free myself from the anxiety of death and the pettiness of life - and only then will I be free to become myself.

I didn't have anybody, really, no foundation in life, so I had to make my own way. Always, from the start. I had to go out in the world and become strong, to discover my mission in life.