“[Cultural department] understand nothing but bureaucratic daily affairs. They don’t care about culture.”

I never had secure, belonging feelings with this society [in China].

[Therefore] holding a trial outside the court. I think that is fairness, that is justice, that is a civil society. Otherwise call it an evil society because everything is hidden.

Liberty is about our rights to question everything.

The society was so different [in China] – it was a feudalistic society. It didn’t come to a point of industrial revolution until twenty years ago.

China restricts the society’s freedom of speech. The Communist Party imposes these limits because it lacks confidence towards the future and has no ideals.

I think by shattering it we can create a new form, a new way to look at what is valuable – how we decide what is valuable.

The museums used to be exhibition halls for government propaganda, and now every city wants to build a museum.

The people will always have the last word – even if someone has a very weak, quiet voice. Such power will collapse because of a whisper.

To give a price to an artwork, no matter how high or low, is always absurd. It’s not something that can be measured by money or by certain numbers.

We are living in a popular culture where everything is overexposed.

My definition of art has always been the same. It is about freedom of expression. I don’t think anybody can separate art from politics. The intention to separate [the two] is itself a very political intention.

To express yourself needs a reason, but expressing yourself is the reason.

Man has a tendency to try to give clear reasons to be rational, but often you can see how all those reasons are not convincing and turn out to be a big nonsense.

Dictatorship is a story about death of others who turn out to be you coincidently.

China hasn’t only existed for one day. Now, the whole nation has become richer and it’s become a problem. The problem is universal. The factor is big. Everybody has to rethink the balance of the world and the whole landscape.

I don’t care if this is a great cultural event or a national symbol. It has nothing to do with me. It deals with the city.

Stupid is a great force in human affairs.

One can find women who have never had one love affair, but it is rare indeed to find any who have had only one.

We must develop huge demonstrations, because the world is used to big dramatic affairs. They think in terms of hundreds of thousands and millions and billions…

A person should be free to do as he likes in his own concerns; but he ought not to be free to do as he likes in acting for another, under the pretext that the affairs of the other are his own affairs.

All love affairs end. Eventually the girl is gonna put curlers in her hair.

Religion is the private affair of an individual…be present in the public domain, but state has to be clearly separated from religion.

In a totalitarian state, the state views any act of an individual to be political in nature. For example, the clothing that a person wears in a modern state is a private affair whereas in the Islamic Republic all women are forced to wear the hijab (Islamic attire).

I’ve had some wonderful love affairs and some that didn’t work out. I don’t want to dwell on that and I don’t want to put people down, but I think all the fabulous places I’ve been, the wonderful things that have happened for me, the great people I’ve met – that ought to make a story.