Neighbors broke the news that my parents had been taken away by immigration officers, and just like that, my stable family life was over.

On the day when I was shot, and on the next day, people raised the banners of 'I am Malala'. They did not say 'I am Taliban.'

I might be afraid of ghosts and like dragons and those things, but I'm not afraid of the Taliban.

And I talked to my doctor, and I must admit, you know, I'm sometimes quite renowned for my outbursts and I was just very frustrated, maybe a little frightened.

There is a part of me that's oblivious. People always ask me, 'What obstacles have you faced?' and I always think, 'What are you talking about?' Whether or not there were obstacles, I never saw obstacles. It's never occurred to me that I wasn't good enough for something.

It is often during the worst of times that we see the best of humanity—awakening within the most ordinary of us that which is most sublime. I do not believe that it is circumstance that produces such greatness any more than it is the canvas that makes the artist. Adversity merely presents the surface on which we render our souls' most exacting likeness. It is in the darkest skies that stars are best seen.

My mom used to say that faith and fear can't exist simultaneously in the mind any more than light and dark can exist simultaneously in the same room.

fear doesn't listen to reason it takes it own counsel

On n'est pas courageux si on ne connaît pas la peur.

I had locked from him the deepest chambers of my fear, only to discover that he had his own key.

Consider your own deepest fears-real or imagined. Actually all fear is born of the imagination, which means that the danger we fear doesn't need to be rational or even real to be potent.

If someone says something that has no basis in truth, it doesn't bother us much. It's the things we fear they might be right about that hurt.