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 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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

I like Indian takeaway.

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

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

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

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.

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

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

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

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.

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

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

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.

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 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.

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

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