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

It is not a sacrifice, it's a choice. If you choose to do something, then you shouldn't say it's a sacrifice, because nobody forced you to do it

I don't understand why people say that I am full of courage. I feel terribly nervous.

We have been making constant efforts, all the time, to start dialogue with the SLORC, but you know it takes two. We don't want a monologue. We would like a substantive political dialogue among the SLORC, political leaders including myself, and leaders of ethnic groups-exactly as stipulated in the U.N. General Assembly resolution on Burma.

My attitude is, do as much as I can while I'm free. And if I'm arrested I'll still do as much as I can.

I do not like to encourage personalized politics, so we would not like it to be thought that just because certain political personalities were attacked, this means the situation is very grave. The true gravity of the situation comes from the fact that ordinary members of the NLD are repressed all the time. We don't want a completely paralyzed political organization, while a select few leaders are protected by international attention.

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. Yet even under the most crushing state machinery courage rises up again and again, for fear is not the natural state of civilized man.