“The pigeon hiccups in the jungle; the fruit remains.”

Don't sweat the small things — a passing disturbance does not change what truly endures.

“To resist is to win — and not, to annihilate is to win.”

Gusmão's Falintil guerrilla motto: enduring under occupation, not destroying the enemy, was the resistance's true measure of victory.

“As long as there is still one guerrilla fighter, the weapon of liberation will continue to spew forth the fire of freedom.”

A vow that the independence struggle would continue as long as even a single fighter remained, recorded on a tape smuggled out of prison.

“He is not the myth which some people have helped construct, nor even less the legendary figure on the lips of others. He is a man confronting many, many difficulties.”

Gusmão's own answer, in the third person, to the question "Who is Xanana?" — rejecting the legend built around him for an honest self-portrait.

“Grandfather crocodile — the legend says, and who am I to disbelieve, that he is Timor!”

The closing line of Gusmão's poem retelling Timor-Leste's founding myth, in which a crocodile transforms its body into the island itself.

“I firmly believe that I am here essentially as the voice of the voiceless people of East Timor, who are with me today in spirit, if not in person.”

Belo framed his Nobel Peace Prize not as a personal honor but as recognition of the East Timorese people he represented.