“The Internet is the best thing that ever happened to China. It turns us into individuals and also enables us to share our perceptions and feelings. It creates a culture of individualism and exchange even though the real society doesn’t promote it.”

We should use this public sphere and redefine – beyond China’s borders – what a government is allowed to do, where its powers end and where the realm of a citizen’s privacy begins.

…photographs are facts, but not necessarily true… The present always surpasses the past, and the future will not care about today.

There are no outdoor sports as graceful as throwing stones at a dictatorship.

If I really have nothing to do, I just watch my cats, take some photos, and go back to my personal blog.

It’s really rubbish that some kind of “technical” learning means you will be a better person because you know this skill better.

The American experience influenced my understanding of individuality, basic human rights, freedom of expression and the rights and responsibilities of citizens.

And who is going to win the competition if U.S. cannot hold a strong ideology? And even the U.S. would’ve lost the ground to win.

This so-called fame or being better off doesn’t really attract me at all.

Otherwise, I think the building can be bigger, larger, and the city can be much more crazy. The problem is the government structure is so deadly stupid, not really solving problems but creating a lot of problems itself every day.

China is at a different stage of development, human rights are violated here much more often. And still, we see improvements even here.

You start to see the society, how it functions, how it works. Then you have a lot of criticism about how it works.

I think optimism is whether you are still exhilarated by life, whether you are curious, whether you still believe there is possibility.

It [success] is really by mistake.

Destroy or build. Crazy or noncrazy. I’m not nostalgic about the old city. I don’t enjoy it that much.

Technology is a liberation. I think the information age probably is the best thing to happen to the human race in human evolution.

Of course, there [in China] has to be chaos. It has to be crazy, and I don’t think there’s anything wrong about it except this government, which is really incapable of doing anything meaningful.

Nothing really happened – I was elected in ’86 – until 1992, and that’s when the Anita Hill debacle happened.

Life was life. It happened. You never knew what was going to come at you. Or how you could defend yourself.

My worst expectations never happened.

Success happened little by little for me. I tasted the flavor of fame in small doses: I started at 10 years old when I won a music contest; I was performing at birthday parties, company meetings.

Perhaps one cannot, what is more one must not, understand what happened, because to understand [the Holocaust] is almost to justify.

I don’t care too much what happened in the past.

You say, “Something important really happened here. I really had hold of something I was visited by the muse.” And that’s enough to make you continue the months and years to finish the whole book.

In this ordinary life without Ren, I think my life with him was like a dream. Especially on a snowy night like this. On a night as cold as this. Someone keep this guy warm for me, please.