“People ask me about what sacrifices I’ve made. I always answer: I’ve made no sacrifices, I’ve made choices.”

More people, especially young people, are realising that if they want change, they’ve got to go about it themselves – they can’t depend on a particular person, ie me, to do all the work. They are less easy to fool than they used to be, they now know what’s going on all over the world.

It is not easy for a people conditioned by fear under the iron rule of the principle that might is right to free themselves from the enervating miasma of fear.

The courage that dares without recognition, without the protection of media attention, is a courage that humbles and inspires and reaffirms our faith in humanity.

The important thing is fear should not control your actions. It should not dictate what you do.

I think that freedom is sometimes a state of mind. Sometimes, mind you, but not always.

I chose to walk on this journey, because I solely believed in it and wholeheartedly decided to do so, and I’m willing and able to pay for the consequences.

If I advocate cautious optimism it is not because I do not have faith in the future but because I do not want to encourage blind faith.

Fear is a habit; I am not afraid.

My attitude to peace is rather based on the Burmese definition of peace – it really means removing all the negative factors that destroy peace in this world.

Intimidation and propaganda work in a duet of oppression, while the people, lapped in fear and distrust, learn to dissemble and to keep silent.

There is a time to be quiet and a time to talk.

Challenges mean opportunities as well.

The people of my country want the two freedoms that spell security: freedom from want and freedom from fear.

So peace does not mean just putting an end to violence or to war, but to all other factors that threaten peace, such as discrimination, such as inequality, poverty.

If you can make people understand why freedom is so important through the arts, that would be a big help.

The quintessential revolution is that of the spirit, born of an intellectual conviction of the need for change in those mental attitudes and values which shape the course of a nation’s development.

Someone once asked me… whether I waited for inspiration. My answer was: “Every day!”

Even the rain could be the answer to your prayers.

Maybe you don’t need to have all the answers, maybe life need not be slower or faster; maybe everything’s evolving in the magic of the unseen, maybe its not about doing but simply being.

The role of the artist is to ask questions, not answer them.

However much you knock at nature’s door, she will never answer you in comprehensible words.

No matter how often you knock at nature’s door, she won’t answer in words you can understand–for Nature is dumb. She’ll vibrate and moan like a violin, but you mustn’t expect a song.

And you loved me like I was, and had always been, the answer and the question did not, and would never, matter.

As there was never any question there was never any answer.