For the Scottish government, the practice of having meetings in different parts of the country is well established, but for the U.K. government, it is a much rarer event.

People in Scotland don't take too kindly to being lectured by a Tory Chancellor.

Many hard working people in low paid jobs get housing benefit.

The Scottish Government will continue to do all it can to get people into work.

I do not want to see, for any reason, the Tories resurgent in any way.

I came into politics because of my opposition to what a Tory Government was doing to the community I grew up in.

I think the fact that people are even talking about the prospect of the Tories coming second is less about anything the Tories have done and more about the failures of Labour to set out, in any kind of coherent sense, what it's for anymore.

Vote SNP for a party that always stands up for Scotland, that is stronger for Scotland, and a government that will keep the country moving in the right direction.

I won't say I've never felt in Alex Salmond's shadow, but latterly, when Alex was leader, I didn't. It's more about my awareness of the fact I became First Minister during a parliamentary term. That means you're First Minister, but you haven't been elected in your own right as First Minister.

I'm not a scientist. If there is a risk to our environment, there will be no fracking.

My pledge to you is that the SNP will put women and gender equality right at the heart of the Westminster agenda.

I stand here today as the first woman first minister of our country. Every day I hold this office, I will work to ensure that every woman, every wee girl across this country, gets a chance to do what I've done and follow their dream.

There was nothing in my childhood that said, 'She's going to be first minister of the country one day.'

I was studious and bookish. Not just as a child but also as a teenager. I took myself too seriously.

Talent is really important in politics, but experience is also really important.

My political awakening, if I can be as grand as to call it that, was all about what was happening around me. It wasn't some romantic, patriotic vision of Scotland going back to what it had been 300 years previously.

I was fascinated, long before I joined the SNP, in the world around me; current affairs really interested me.

I've got absolutely no desire or intention of damaging England.

I am the granddaughter of an English woman. I love England and her people and, regardless of politics, consider you to be family... and always will.

I hope nobody in England is afraid of the SNP - there is absolutely no need to be.

If something can be proven to work, we should try it... Making sure that our young folk get the best education is the only thing that matters to me, and if something can be shown to work in doing that or if something's worth trying to do that, then I'll certainly be in the market for it.

I like Indian takeaway.

I am quite driven. I know what I think, and I know what I want to achieve, but I also hope that people who are asked to describe me would describe me as pretty down-to-earth, loyal, friendly. The more experience I have got in politics, I think the more I have allowed me to shine through.

It would be a very serious mistake for the U.K. to vote to leave the European Union, and I think it would be democratically indefensible for Scotland, if we had voted to stay in, to face the prospect of being taken out.

If there is a 'Leave' vote in England and across the U.K. as a whole, then we see the reins of power being seized by politicians who are on the right of the Conservative party.

I desperately want Scotland to be an independent country. I cannot, though, sit here and tell you definitively that it will happen, and that it will happen on this timescale, because I have to respect the opinion of the people of Scotland.

I think the first decision I took when I became a government minister was to reverse the planned closure of Monklands Accident and Emergency. It's an issue close to my heart.

A whole range of things are done to ensure services remain safe and sustainable because that is the absolute paramount duty of the health board.

I think Scotland will become an independent country. I've always believed that. It means that if I'm right on that, there has to be another referendum at some stage. But the timing and circumstances of that will require careful judgment.

Is it not typical that we have a Tory Government that wants, just like its pals in the Labour Party, constantly to talk down Scotland's prospects?

This government and the party that I lead will continue to argue an alternative to the Tory-Labour austerity.

It is clear that my predecessor as First Minister is frightening the life out of the Tories and the Labour Party. Long may it continue.

Would I love to think that one day I would be First Minister of an independent Scotland? Of course.

I have said repeatedly I do want to take longer to eliminate the deficit than the other parties. Because I want to see us have the ability to invest more in our economy, in our public services, and in lifting people out of poverty.

Scottish politics, U.K. politics, is not really like American politics in this respect. Not everybody is absolutely obsessed with image. I'm not saying the United States is obsessed with image.

I've not had a deliberate image makeover.

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.

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 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.

I'm not going to do anything that sees a Tory government be likely.

We've chosen to stay part of the Westminster system, but we don't want to be a forgotten, sidelined part of it.

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.

I take responsibility for everything that happens in the SNP as leader.

Scotland never voted for Margaret Thatcher.

I know you've got to earn people's trust, and you've got to earn it day after day after day.

I feel comfortable in a position of leadership, but that's not to say I feel complacent about it. I take it incredibly seriously.

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 love talking to the public, I love hearing what people have got to say.

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'm the leader of the SNP. I think you would expect me to say I would vote SNP in whatever constituency I lived in.