Quotes from Katharine Gun

Because I'm not ambitious it's not paramount for me to find myself in a high-paid job.

It is vital to speak up in a democracy. Otherwise we are living in dictatorships.

If a rogue nation were to attack the U.K. physically, I would be a patriot, yes; I would try to defend the U.K.

In any walk of life, you can choose to do the right thing.

The whole Big Brother vision of the world is looming large.

I'm just baffled in the 21st century we as human beings are still dropping bombs on each other as a means to resolve issues.

We are living in an age where it's difficult to know what the truth is and we have got politicians in charge who actually appear to not really care what the truth is.

I didn't feel at all guilty about what I did, so I couldn't plead guilty, even though I would get a more lenient sentence.

I was arrested on suspicion of breach of Official Secrets Act in March 2003, but they didn't charge me until November. Now, the in-between months, I was bailed and re-bailed, and my life was on standstill. I was in limbo. It was a difficult time for me and my family, because we just did not know what the future held for us.

If you are a journalist, check and double-check your sources. Don't just swallow what politicians tell you.

I'm not a politician; I don't have a well-organised PR machine to craft my every word.

Cheering crowds have never been my sort of thing.

You just have to get on with life, there's no alternative. You could curl up in a ball on your bed, but that's not going to achieve anything.

I grew up in Taiwan, which was a military dictatorship.

If my own country is subverting the rule of law and sending its own citizens, its military, into harm's way on the basis of lies and propaganda, I would argue that being a patriot is calling out those lies and saying, 'No, you don't send our military into harm's way with no legal justification.'

Why did the British authorities wait eight months before charging me - and then drop the charges, claiming there was insufficient evidence for prosecution when I had confessed to the leak from the start?

After the initial flurry of media interest, I was left to figure out how to move on with my life - and that proved hard. I was glad to get back to what I hoped would be normality, but the effect on me had been traumatising.

First of all, I never set out to be a whistleblower. Secondly, I never expected that my story would be interesting to anybody. Third of all, you know, I was actually terrified of being named, of being identified.

After the invasion of Afghanistan, when the focus suddenly turned toward Iraq, I suddenly thought, 'What on earth had Iraq got to do with the war on terror?'

I know my own flaws only too well.

I have only ever followed my conscience.

Now everybody is questioning everything, so it's up to journalists who really care about the truth to fight for their corner of the truth and journalistic freedom.

I felt guilty - like, I leaked this memo, and now there's going to be a witch hunt for the person who did it, and I'm not going to be able to deny it. That was when reality hit.

I mean, Ed Snowden was basically saying the same things that Bill Binney and Thomas Drake and other U.S. whistleblowers had said before him. But he came out more publicly, and maybe revealed more. He showed that when the U.S. government said, 'We are not surveilling U.S. citizens,' that was a lie.