“To experience poetry is to see over and above reality. It is to discover that which is beyond the physical, to experience another life and another level of feeling.”

I don’t personally feel any association with a kind of culture related to state, or culture related to power, which I think is always disgusting.

Warhol influenced me because of his writing. If I had never read his writings and interviews, I would never have understood his work.

I don’t want the next generation to fight the same fight as I did.

Nothing is clear-cut. Perhaps I’ll find my way – or get totally lost.

The Internet has established a public sphere and developed a pressure which the government can no longer ignore.

At the moment about 350,000 students return to China from abroad each year – 350,000 young and educated people. I know about them because they know me and often ask me in the street if they can take a selfie with me.

The whole attitude of society has become much more open and realistic. They realize that the only way to make a more democratic and free society is to let different opinions come out.

I am everywhere and I am nowhere. That’s the beauty of the Internet Age.

I believe [the architecture firm] Herzog and de Meuron and our collaboration made the product the best it could be.

If it’s possible, I will have some noodles in the morning and start talking to people, start to think about a few things in my head.

The art always wins. Anything can happen to me, but the art will stay.

Censorship is saying: “I’m the one who says the last sentence. Whatever you say, the conclusion is mine.” But the internet is like a tree that is growing.

You don’t have to march on Tiananmen, but you do have to be clear-minded, to find your own means of expression.

Many people are going to use [Beijing National Stadium], which makes it more meaningful. If we don’t design it, somebody else has to design it.

Of course, people will call you an old artist or young artist, which is just a character of you.

I think it’s quite narrow-minded. There wasn’t much encouragement or opportunities for any artist – not just Chinese artists.

God has privileged us in Christ Jesus to live above the ordinary human plane of life. Those who want to be ordinary and live on a lower plane can do so, but as for me, I will not.

We may treat of the Soul as in the body – whether it be set above it or actually within it – since the association of the two constitutes the one thing called the living organism, the Animate.Now from this relation.

As in certain combinations so words and in all kinds of music; for melodies and cadences are beautiful; and minds that lift themselves above the realm of sense to a higher order are aware of beauty in the conduct of life.

Changes and progress very rarely are gifts from above. They come out of struggles from below.

If you would hit the mark, you must aim a little above it.

The day you stop doing the small things is the day you think you’re above everybody else.

There is in fact no such thing as art for art’s sake, art that stands above classes, art that is detached from or independent of politics. Proletarian literature and art are part of the whole proletarian revolutionary cause.

One can not be an American by going about saying that one is an American. It is necessary to feel America, like America, love America and then work.