My applications submitted to the Tribunal regarding my interview during the hunger strike were misinterpreted, and it was published in the press that I was going to offer defence, though in reality I was never willing to offer any defence.

Nobody wants to be on food stamps, but when my family lost everything, we were grateful for it. I was grateful the program was there so I could concentrate on my schoolwork and not on my empty belly. We were grateful that we had the support we needed to roll up our sleeves and rebuild our lives.

When you speak up about any sense of unfairness or injustice, you're told that you're overreacting, you're too angry, too silly-shut up already. It takes a tremendous amount of fortitude to be able to live in this world as a woman, let alone a woman who wants things to change.

You wish to put me in the dark. I tell you that I will never be put in the dark. You wish to beat me. I tell you that you will never beat me.

If it is a shame to be the second man on Mount Everest, then I will have to live with this shame.

I hope to live long enough to see my surviving comrades march side by side with the Union veterans along Pennsylvania Avenue, and then I will die happy.