Maybe unlike a lot of people who join the SNP today, I never had any expectation of a political career.
— Nicola Sturgeon
I don't know Ed Miliband as a person particularly well.
I'll be arguing for Scotland to vote to stay in the E.U.
Most politicians come into politics because they want to make a difference; we just have different ideas how to do it.
I think the Tories are doing - and are intent on doing - damage to things I hold dear.
The U.K. needs a strong opposition, and Labour shows no signs of being capable of being that. The SNP is filling that void and will go on seeking to do that.
Our MPs will take decisions on how they're voting on a day-to-day basis. But I'm the leader of the party, and in terms of our overall strategy and how we vote on key issues, then ultimately, those decisions will be mine.
I feel sorry for generations of Labour voters and supporters who must look and wonder what on earth has gone wrong and what Labour is for.
Many people from many different walks of life have marriages that break up, and those are deeply personal, deeply painful but ultimately private matters.
Being a housewife is not important to me, but I'm never happier than when I come home and shut the door.
If your pal or neighbour is in the SNP, you're more likely to listen to them than if you just turn on the telly and see me or Alex. The growth of membership is building a politically engaged community base that hasn't been there in my lifetime.
I feel comfortable in a position of leadership, but that's not to say I feel complacent about it. I take it incredibly seriously.
I know you've got to earn people's trust, and you've got to earn it day after day after day.
I take responsibility for everything that happens in the SNP as leader.
I'm not going to do anything that sees a Tory government be likely.
I'm quite hypercritical of myself. It's a very Scottish thing, always thinking that you've got to be that bit better than everyone else to be good enough.
I wish we lived in a world where how you looked or what you wore wasn't an issue for men or women, and it's by and large not an issue for men, so I wish it wasn't an issue for women, but it is.
I don't feel we need to be independent for me to feel confident in my Scottish identity. I think Scotland is pretty comfortable in its identity. We won't need independence to preserve it... if we don't become independent, it won't disappear; it isn't under existential threat.
People don't want to go back to the days, pre-referendum, when the Westminster establishment sidelined and ignored Scotland. They want Scotland's voice to be heard.
We will never vote for the renewal of Trident; that's a decision which will fall to be made in the next Westminster parliament. We will never vote for that.
Maybe its time for politicians to fight back a little bit in terms of this notion that politicians are all in it for themselves, we're all the same, we're not driven by sincere motives. Because the fact of the matter is the vast majority are.
My politics are wildly different from hers, but someone who has been good for women in politics, stamped her authority on European and world affairs, is Angela Merkel.
Our opposition to Trident is very clear, very firm, very long-standing, very principled, and we would seek to build an alliance to prevent the renewal of Trident.
I'm not making any secret of the fact I still believe in independence. We'll continue to argue the case.
Labour's support in Scotland depends on their ability to be electable. If they are divided and unelectable, what's the point?
The oil and gas sector in the North Sea does have a strong future if we do the right things now, but we've got to make sure that the infrastructure is right to support the sector, but also to support, over the next few years, diversification as well.
I've had particularly unpleasant stuff, and it has been reported that I've had death threats. Twitter and Facebook give people who have always been out there a platform from which to hurl abuse, and all I can do is try to block it out and remind myself that tweets are transient and get lost in the ether after a few moments.
I love talking to the public, I love hearing what people have got to say.
It's not opinion polls that determine the outcome of elections, it's votes in ballot boxes.
People who think of a nationalist party sometimes think 'inward-looking and parochial.' The kind of nationalism I represent is the opposite of that.
The SNP became a minority government in 2007, then a majority one in 2011. But Labour viewed what was happening as some kind of aberration. They felt the problem wasn't theirs: they didn't have to change; the Scottish people had just gone down this wrong road, and if they waited long enough, they would find their way back.
Scotland is not a region of the U.K.; Scotland is a nation, and if we cannot protect our interests within a U.K. that is going to be changing fundamentally, then that right of Scotland to consider the options of independence has to be there.
Literally every time I'm on camera, as well as there being commentary on what I've said, there'll be commentary on what my hair looked like, what I wear. Often it's written in the most hideous and quite cruel way.
I've not had a deliberate image makeover.
Tory governments are bad for Scotland.
I do struggle to identify an occasion when I was held back because I'm a woman... You don't think about it at the time, but looking back at it, of course.
It's very much the currency of discourse on social media where political disagreements very quickly become very personalised.
I want there to be another independence referendum at some stage. I want Scotland to be independent, but I wouldn't choose to have it happen because England votes to come out of the E.U.
I admire Obama.
I've not hidden and I'll never hide the fact that I want Scotland to be an independent country. But as long as we're part of the Westminster system, it's really important to people in Scotland that we get good decisions coming out of Westminster. So we've got a vested interest in being a constructive participant.
I'm manifestly not the same as Alex Salmond. I'm a different gender, for example... I'm being flippant, but maybe this is a partly gender-driven difference: I'm very keen that we find a way of reaching out across party divides to find things we agree on, as well as the things we disagree on.
Clearly, any issues about breaching of expenses rules should be properly investigated.
I'm the leader of the SNP. I think you would expect me to say I would vote SNP in whatever constituency I lived in.
Social media is natural to me, and it's a very immediate way of saying something. It's the way politics are done these days. In modern politics, you can't ignore that even if you wanted to. I can't imagine doing politics without it.
At these big set-piece events like the leaders' debates, that exterior of calm and serenity is nothing compared to what's going on inside most of the time.
I am quite hot-headed; I am quite impulsive. Fortunately, it doesn't last very long.
Scotland never voted for Margaret Thatcher.
We've chosen to stay part of the Westminster system, but we don't want to be a forgotten, sidelined part of it.
I am quite a shy person. You say that to people, and they say, 'You do interviews, speeches. How can you be shy?' But, fundamentally, I am.
Scotland almost invented the modern world. I mean, all of these televisions, telephones, penicillin, we all - all of these things were invented in Scotland.
