“Civilization has evolved toward more acceptance, understanding and tolerance of global thinking. If we accept differences, our creativity booms. It makes life much more colorful.”

I lived there [ in New York City] as an artist, but never as a Chinese artist.

As a total activity – I practice curating, art, architecture, writing, and publishing all together. I still act as a living creature.

For artists and intellectuals today, what is most needed is to be clear about social responsibility, because that is what most people automatically give up. Just to protect yourself as an individual is very political.

I think the pearls – one is a necklace, and another you have five hundred pounds of pearls, which may be one million pearls in a bowl – really show a kind of [society] condition.

If you don’t act, the danger becomes stronger.

It’s the place they take you before they give you over to the judicial system. You stay there for a year or two and they make you really suffer to confess everything.

I don’t think there is a distinct change, because in the West I’m not a person who can serve his purpose.

You know about the fantasies related to the classics, but there is no real discussion about today’s life and no discussion of the real conditions – which is really sickening.

I’m totally independent. I don’t bear any responsibility to any system.

Life is never guaranteed to be safe, so we better use it while we are still in good condition.

For years, I refused to go to any openings, not even my own.

I was in the most restricted prison in China, the most tough. The design of the prison is modeled for internal crimes of the Communist party, so it’s like a mafia family’s law. It’s independent to the law this nation openly applies.

I grew up in a desert, which has no kind of imagination.

Being an artist is more of a mindset, a way of seeing things; it is no longer so much about producing something.

We literally lived underground. We dug a hole and lived there for years. My father cleaned public toilets, even though he was a highly respected poet.

As a human being, member of society, you must clearly state your mind. It’s a responsibility. It is the way you identify yourself otherwise you don’t know who you are and why you are here.

Clear thinking at the wrong moment can stifle creativity.

Ingenuity requires creativity.

To me, creatively challenging myself is my version of owning the Nets.

What is the worst is a fashion designer who talks all the time of his or her creativity, what they are, how they evolved. Just do it and shut up.

Creativity is the encounter of the intensively conscious human being with his world.

Responsibility is what awaits outside the Eden of Creativity.

Creativity arises out of the tension between spontaneity and limitations, the latter (like the river banks) forcing the spontaneity into the various forms which are essential to the work of art or poem.

Creativity is the process of bringing something new into being. Creativity requires passion and commitment. It brings to our awareness what was previously hidden and points to new life. The experience is one of heightened consciousness: ecstasy.