The arts can bring the heart to the aid of the head, the personal to the political.

We need to learn and to show others that there are tried and tested, powerful ways of containing and resolving conflict which do not require the use of force.

More and more individuals worldwide are realizing that war does not solve conflict, nor resolve long-standing cycles of violence. As more of those who have this understanding communicate it to policy-makers and more particularly, start implementing it in their own lives and localities, change will start to happen.

Real change comes when people are enabled to use their thinking and their energy in a new way, using a different system of thought, different language, and having fresh visions of the future.

Anger is like gasoline. If you spray it around and somebody lights a match, you've got an inferno. [But] if we can put our anger inside an engine, it can drive us forward.

There are astonishing stories of heroism not only in preventing bloodshed, but in building understanding which lasts.

I flew aeroplanes, parachuted, walked on my own across the Himalayas - you name it if it was dangerous, I did it.