“Everything is selected by the central government without good judgment or an understanding of culture to make it really safe. They will become nobody to maintain their power and be raised to the next higher level.”

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.

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.

Behind every political deal in this country, the first casualties are always the ordinary people, who are barely treated as human.

Of course, most luxury goods in China are for corrupted officials and their relatives. And that made China become the biggest luxury-goods market.

Everything is art. Everything is politics.

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

Even today the borders they’re seeing the physical borders are very different from the political borders. Because all those powers are so connected, and you cannot even see whose interest in what move.

In my case, I was stuck there for quite a while. New York is large enough to be a very abstract city, so nobody cares.

The importance of elections, transparency, legal procedures, an independent army, and the judicial system is not regarded as highly in China. These core values are the most important evidence of the health of a society, quality of life, and security.

It’s just a way you have to set up some kind of activities to follow your instincts or your curiosities.

We should also leave behind discrimination, because it is narrow-minded and ignorant, denies contact and warmth; and corrodes mankind’s belief that we can better ourselves.

Creativity is the power to reject the past, to change the status quo, and to seek new potential. Simply put, aside from using one’s imagination – perhaps more importantly – creativity is the power to act.

I never really read Allen Ginsberg poetry, even though I have a book he gave me.

Any politician who respects China’s government should tell it openly what is in his heart. It is disrespectful to keep quiet about such issues – both vis-a-vis the government and the people concerned.

Only a person who is congenially self-centered has the effrontery and the stamina to write essays

One central need in life is to fulfill its own potential.

I’m the only woman who can walk in Central Park at night… and reduce the crime rate.

The uplands of my home country in north central Kentucky are sloping and easily eroded, dependent for safekeeping upon year-round cover of perennial plants.

If a man were to look over the fence on one side of his garden and observe that the neighbor on his left had laid his garden path round a central lawn; and were to look over the fence on the other side of his garden and observe that the neighbor on his right had laid his path down the middle of the lawn.

Envy is the central fact of American life.

The cardinal responsibility of leadership is to identify the dominant contradiction at each point of the historical process and to work out a central line to resolve it.

My heart breaks. Really, I have tears in my eyes. Central midfield is Shinji’s best role.