I got rejected from journalism school!

I would never think of myself as a role model.

Mortars and artillery don't discriminate against gender.

I think that more often than not, people underestimate me.

With photography, I always think that it's not good enough.

Every story takes its toll on me and leaves an impression on me.

I'm a very open person, very self-deprecating. I accept my flaws.

I've rarely seen portrayals of photojournalists that seem accurate.

Where in the world would I rather be than on the front line of history?

The goal for me is to pull in the reader and to have them ask questions.

Americans are really lovely people - friendly, kind and willing to help you out.

I didn't want my gender to determine whether or not I could cover breaking news.

People think photography is about photographing. To me, it’s about relationships.

I hope that my work helps people - that's the thing that drives me and keeps me going.

Sometimes when I am photographing a major news event, I am suddenly overwhelmed by helplessness.

I think it's important to have perspective and to look at what you don't necessarily want to see.

In so many countries, Western journalists are viewed simply as dollar signs. We're ransom objects.

I had imposed unspeakable worry on my husband, Paul de Bendern, on more occasions than I could count.

The fact is that trauma and risk taking hadn't become scarier over the years; it had become more normal.

I started freelancing for the Associated Press. I had a great mentor there who sort of taught me everything.

Don't expect things to happen fast. Be empathetic with the people you are photographing. Don't be concerned about money.

I didn't know a single female photographer who covered conflict who even had a boyfriend, much less a husband or a baby.

I try not to get caught up in how our society is so inundated with images, and stay very focused on the work that I'm doing.

I knew that my interest lied in international stories. I was interested in how women were living under the Taliban, for example.

The possibility to mobilize the international community to act on human suffering is what drives me every day as a photojournalist.

I've always wanted to do a photo book, but I've never done one because I've never felt ready; I just didn't feel my work was good enough.

I'm not very religious at all - I was raised Catholic, but probably haven't gone to church since my Holy Communion when I was about 6 or 7.

For a journalist who covers the Muslim world, we have responsibilities to be familiar with that culture and to know how to respond to that.

I come from a big family of hairdressers; they didn't read newspapers. I would say, 'I'm off to Afghanistan...' and they would say, 'Have fun!'

I had first visited Kurdistan in 2003 before the invasion of Iraq, camping out in Erbil and Sulaimaniya while waiting for Saddam Hussein's fall.

If women are all of a sudden complaining all the time about getting sent to Pakistan, then if I were an editor, I probably wouldn't send a woman.

You have to believe 100 percent in what you're doing, that some picture or some thing we do is going to change the world in some tiny, minute way.

I wanted the ideal personal life, but I also wanted to keep rushing off, and that doesn't work, not unless you've got an incredibly understanding partner.

I always knew my death would be a possible consequence of the work I do. But for me it was a price I was willing to pay because this is what I believed in.

I just pray. And I'm not very religious at all - I was raised Catholic, but probably haven't gone to church since my Holy Communion, when I was about 6 or 7.

A lot of women act like it's the easiest decision, and I'm just going to have a baby and put my life on hold and not be worried about it. Well, I was worried.

I'm incredibly focused. I think it's a blessing and a curse. I'm so driven that nothing else can stand in my way. For many years, I didn't have a personal life.

I was assigned a Taliban "minder" who followed me everywhere. But he couldn't follow me into homes where there were women, so I took photos inside people's homes.

I generally don't follow domestic news that much aside from how it relates to the stories I'm covering abroad, like what Americans think of the War in Afghanistan.

I'm not the kind of person to sit and dwell for ages on something that happened. I go through something, I experience it, I try to learn from it, and I move forward.

There are ways to minimize the risk if you are a woman working in the Middle East: You can dress modestly, wear the hijab, cover your head, always travel with a man.

My life isn't always at risk, even if I'm in a war zone. A lot of these places have areas of calm, so covering war doesn't necessarily mean being shot at all the time.

Since Sept. 11, many of the wars of our generation are in the Muslim world. So as a woman, I have access to 50 percent of the population that my male colleagues don't.

As a photographer who is constantly in violent, bloody situations where the instinct is to turn away, I am always trying to figure out how to make people not turn away.

The first time I visited Afghanistan in May 2000, I was 26 years old, and the country was under Taliban rule. I went there to document Afghan women and landmine victims.

In a place like Afghanistan where the society is completely segregated, women have access to women. Men cannot always photograph women and cannot get the access that I get.

With each assignment, I weigh the looming possibility of being killed, and I chastise myself for allowing fear to hinder me. War photographers aren't supposed to get scared.

I grew up in Connecticut, going in and out of New York City, and I worked in the city in the '90s. I was freelancing for the Associated Press, and I fell in love with New York.

Becoming a mother hasn't necessarily changed how I shoot, but it certainly has made me more sensitive, and it certainly makes it much harder for me to photograph dying children.

For me, taking photographs is such a tortured process. I'm always feeling like I'm not getting enough: I'm in the wrong place, the light isn't good, the subject's not comfortable.

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