“Subjection of any kind and in any place is beneath the dignity of man.”

I shot, rode, jumped, and took part in all the fights of the boys.

I was learning that books and diagrams can be evil things if they deaden the mind of man and make him blind or cynical before subjection of any kind.

New York was a new and strange world. Vast, impersonal, merciless.

But I see no reason why a woman should not grow and develop in all those outlets which are suited to her nature, it matters not at all what they may be.

I feel like a person living on the brink of a volcano crater.

For the first week of the Sian events I was a first aid worker in the streets of Sian.

There were fifty-four women and forty little boys with the Red Army prisoners, and I went daily to take care of them also.

But there were years when, in search of what I thought was better, nobler things I denied these, my people, and my family.

Thousands of women are crushed and made inarticulate by that system and never develop as their natures would force them to develop were they in a decent environment.

And the woman who could win the respect of man was often the woman who could knock him down with her bare fists and sit on him until he yelled for help.

When I was a girl, the West was still young, and the law of force, of physical force, was dominant.

I was ashamed of them and their ways of life. But now – yes, I love them; they are a part of my blood; they, with all their virtues and their faults, played a great part in forming my way of looking at life.

Gambling in the mark has been the great indoor sport of the capitalists for months, and consequently food has increased by 25 to 100 per cent.

Everybody calls everybody a spy, secretly, in Russia, and everybody is under surveillance. You never feel safe.

There’s something dreadfully decisive about a beheading.

But here in New York I was ignorant, insignificant, unimportant–one in millions whose destiny concerned no one. New York did not even know of my existence. Nor did it care.

I can say now: all the combatants who participated in the fight for freedom in South America came to Algeria; it’s from there that all those who fought left.

The fight against corruption is not bound to high-profile arrests and high-profile investigations.

The battle against terrorism is not only a military fight but primarily a battle of information.

The liberation movement which I led in Algeria, the organization that I created to fight the French army, was at first a small movement of nothing at all.

We need a united front against Islamic State and Assad happens to be the decisive power that can fight them. But the situation is preposterous because we also have to respect the calls for change. I would be in favor of a dignified change.

I’m still fighting. I don’t know how much longer, but I’m still fighting a struggle, which is to make cinema alive and not just make another film.

I went through about six or seven painting methods just to see what I didn’t want to do. And then I got off the wall, and went into the environment.

Now, being a girl, I was ashamed of my body and my lack of strength. So I tried to be a man.