I think I was the healthiest prisoner of conscience in the world.

I do not look upon my life as a sacrifice at all.

Burma is not yet a full-fledged democracy. We have started working on the road to full democracy. We have a lot of things to do in order to build a democratic structure and to be become a full-fledged democracy.

Humor is one of the best ingredients of survival.

The main aim of the [political] dialogue should be to resolve the problems of the nation, not to find who is the winner and who is the loser. That's not what it's all about. It's to try and find an answer that is acceptable to all parties concerned, which would of course require some give and take.

At the moment I would like to emphasize the need for vocational training, for non-formal education in Burma to help all those young people who have suffered from a bad education. They have to be trained to earn their living. They have to have enough education vocational training to be able to set up respectable lives for themselves.

I don't want Burma to be a basket case forever.