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

Let's get one thing straight: I am not an adrenaline junkie. Just because you cover conflict doesn't mean you thrive on adrenaline. It means you have a purpose, and you feel it is very important for people back home to see what is happening on the front line, especially if we are sending American soldiers there.

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

By the time the United States went to war with Afghanistan in the fall of 2001, I had made three trips to the country. I covered the fall of the Taliban in Kandahar and have been returning routinely for the past 14 years.

It's not easy to have it all. Frankly, you know, you have to give as much to the career that the career requires and, at the same time, you have to give as much to the family as the attention that's required.

My mother was a lupus patient. I was a child with the lupus gene.

The family exists in order to allow women to have children and to have the protection of a male who takes care of them.

My mother taught us the man was the head of the family, but the woman was the neck, and you could turn him any way you like.