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

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

I think by not letting young people be fully informed, how can they have energy and passion and the right picture of the world? I think that’s the true crime.

[Cultural departments] don’t care about culture. Maybe they’re the furthest from the people who understand culture.

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.

This week, the world gathers in Beijing for the 2008 Olympic games. This is the extraordinary moment China has been dreaming of for 100 years.

I think my stance and my way of life is my most important art.

Whenever there is injustice, there is tension. But in China it is very hard to release your anger unless you burn yourself or you jump from a bridge. In a society where there is no freedom of the press, it is difficult for victims to be noticed.

We’re different, and you’re dangerous.” That kind of thinking stops human, civilized evolution. It’s dangerous to create that kind of tension.

If there’s the right condition, I always want to express the concept or ideas in a very independent way.

I never had a sense of home.

I deal with students every day – from China, Germany, the United States, Hong Kong and Taiwan. And I’ve noticed that the Chinese students are the least trained in having a sense of aesthetics.

I loved New York — every inch of it. It was a little bit scary at that time, but still, the excitement was so strong — visually and intellectually. It was like a monster.

The only way to avoid misunderstanding, war and bloodshed is to defend freedom of expression and to communicate with sincerity, concern and good intentions.

I think to deal with the situation like human crisis, 65 million people being displaced, lost their home, and with such human tragedy, has to make every level of society to be conscious and to be alert about the situation.

I spent a lot of time standing on street corners [of New York City] talking to local residents. I spent time in bookstores and galleries. But most of the time, I really did not have much to do.

A nation like China has become one of the biggest production fields for exporting cheap labor, which also re-questions our history and past, re-questions human desire, and the human illusions of the past.

A theater without beer is just a museum

We have to recognize that the world is not something sculptured and finished, which we as perceivers walk through like patrons in a museum; the world is something we make through the act of perception.

Bus stops are far more interesting and useful places to have art than in museums.

The parts of graffiti I like are really antagonizing still – it’s not something that a museum would really embrace.

[Museums] all belongs to the cultural department, which is the biggest cultural department in the world.

If you spend your life walking through somebody else’s museum, you never find out whether you’re Rembrandt or not.

I like the idea of the museum world and the university-academic situation where artists talk to each other or where artists or art students study with artists.

The society that will organize production on the basis of a free and equal association of the producers will put the whole machinery of the state where it will then belong: into the museum of antiquities, by the side of the spinning wheel and the bronze axe.