Amal Clooney

I remember all the stages in my career where I almost didn't have enough confidence to try for something, almost didn't have the guts to follow something I was excited about doing, because I didn't know anyone else who'd done it, or other people made me question it.

I believe in international justice. I believe it's important that you don't just turn the page without people being held to account.

The first piece of advice I would have from my experience is that governments need to be vocal about human rights.

Democracy is dead in the Maldives.

WikiLeaks' disclosures should be protected under the First Amendment.

I hate the idea that you somehow, as a human being, have to be put in a box. There's no reason why lawyers can't be fun - or actresses can't be serious.

If you're a woman lying on the beach in the Maldives, you might want to know that a kilometer away, another woman is being flogged. And you might want to find your own way to protest that.

As women, we may not be a minority, but there is a bond that we all share. It is not a bond of geography. Or religion. Or culture. It is a bond of shared experience - experiences that only women go through and struggles that only women face.

I think it's important for tourists to know the facts of what's happening in the Maldives. I don't think people realize that there's a flogging taking place a kilometer away when they're sunbathing in their resort.

Sentencing a political opponent to death after a show trial is no different to taking him out on the street and shooting him. In fact, it is worse because using the court system as a tool of state repression makes a mockery of the rule of law.

I wanted to do well academically. But it was equally important to do things in an effortless manner.

I think the international community should be ashamed that they haven't done more for the Yazidis.