If you're feeling helpless, help someone.

A more significant phase should mean serious political dialogue.

Unless there is free and fair competition, there can't be healthy economic development. And what we have in Burma now is not an open-market economy that allows free and fair competition, but a form of colonialism makes a few people very, very wealthy. It's what you would crony capitalism.

Once serious political dialogue has begun, the international community can assume that we have achieved genuine progress along the road to real democratisation.

I think, if you have enough inner resources, then you can live in isolation for long periods of time and not feel diminished by it.

The struggle for democracy and human rights in Burma is a struggle for life and dignity. It is a struggle that encompasses our political, social and economic aspirations.

In Burma, we need to find out what we have to do in order to keep the democratization process on track. Economic reforms have to be taken one by one. You see it's not just speed that's important, it's sequencing as well. You've got to get the speed right; you have to get the sequencing right.