Quotes from Ingrid Betancourt

I owe everything to France.

I called my party the Green Oxygen party because Colombians were choking.

I didn't want to accept that people would forget me, that the government wouldn't do anything to negotiate our freedom. After a year, I came to understand that not only had one year passed, many more would come.

It's easy when you have suffered to feel the link with what others have gone through.

As a Colombian, the only way I can relate to my country is through suffering. I hope that my children and my grandchildren will relate to the beautiful country in a way that it is positive and loving.

On one hand, it seems strange that a country that has suffered so much from violence and war would be debating if they want peace or not. But in Colombia, a part of society is deeply connected with the war as a means of making a living.

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.

Before I was abducted, I think that happiness was related to success. Nowadays happiness is related, for me, to rest, peace, serenity.

It's important for me to fight for principles. But I am not willing to cope with the nastiness of politics anymore and the endless destructive confrontations that it leads to.

It is said that the compensation for the effort courage, tenacity, and endurance displayed during the journey was not happiness. Nor glory. What God offered as a reward was only rest.

I continue to aspire to serve Colombia as president.

I love Colombia's military. I love my country.

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.

I continue with the illusion of serving Colombia. Only God knows if it were to be from the presidency.

I have shed many tears of pain and indignation.

I know that I have to give testimony about all the things I lived, but I need time.

The only thing I've settled in my mind is that I want to forgive, and forgiveness comes with forgetting.

France is my home; you are my family. I am carrying all of you in my heart.

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.

At first, I didn't want to accept that I had been abducted. I kept thinking, 'Next week, I'll be freed.'

I want to tell President Sarkozy - and through him, all the French people - that they were our support, our light.

I carry the voices of all my family within me, and they were with me there in the jungle.

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 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.