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

Creativity is the power to act.

We are not on – even just a step away from the most brutal and primitive crudity. To be very crude on those issues, which is always challenges and we always have to look at the situation like a mirror, to draw some understanding.

It’s not really an ideology, but a method of control. But China’s problems are not just China’s problems – they’re human problems. Humanity has always worked better when you see it as one.

Selling high or low doesn’t mean anything. It has to do purely with the market.

Democracy, material wealth, and universal education are the soil upon which modernism exists.

My definition of art has always been the same. It is about freedom of expression, a new way of communication. It is never about exhibiting in museums or about hanging it on the wall. Art should live in the heart of the people.

Once you’ve tasted freedom, it stays in your heart and no one can take it. Then, you can be more powerful than a whole country.

Every day I’m learning something new from the practice. It’s very rewarding.

For those actors and directors who produce films which are always about the old kingdom or about heroes.

For me, it is OK as long as I can breathe, as long as my heart is pumping, as long as I can express myself.

In the end, I think, the state’s rigidity is a function of its own insecurity, its indecisiveness.

When human beings are scared and feel everything is exposed to the government, we will censor ourselves from free thinking. That’s dangerous for human development.

After I came back [to China], there was still a long period of time when I felt I had nothing to do.

In a society like this there is no negotiation, no discussion, except to tell you that power can crush you any time they want — not only you, your whole family and all people like you.

They lack any ability to sense what is beautiful or what is proper. They can be learned and skillful, but they lack the ability to make their own free judgment. It is really sad to see young adults of 20, 25 years who were never taught to make their own decisions.

Overturning police cars is a super-intense workout. It’s probably the only sport I enjoy.

The best things said come last. People will talk for hours saying nothing much and then linger at the door with words that come with a rush from the heart.

The best moments in reading are when you come across something – a thought, a feeling, a way of looking at things – which you had thought special and particular to you.

You can’t always have the best team. It’s always a compromise.

The liturgy is best treated and read as if it’s someone announcing the departure of trains.

To be most effective, flattery is always best applied with a trowel.

I had long ago discovered that when a word or formula refused to come to mind the best thing for it was to think of something else: tigers for instance or oatmeal.

This is also, I believe, what America is at its best—a whole greater than the sum of it’s parts.

I’m an actor. My life as an actor depends on who sends me what. I’m just taking the best stuff that I can find that’s sent my way, regardless of how big or little the paycheck is.