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It’s the place they take you before they give you over to the judicial system. You stay there for a year or two and they make you really suffer to confess everything.

Ai Weiwei

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.
AI WEIWEI

Design Make Meaningful People Use
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.
AI WEIWEI

Abroad Educated Government Moment People Student Year Young
My typical day is I wake up and appreciate that I can still wake up.
AI WEIWEI

Appreciate Typical Wake Up
People have been longing for this moment, because it symbolises a turning point in China’s relationship with the outside world.
AI WEIWEI

Country Longing Moment Outside People Relationship Symbolises Turning World
It’s just a way you have to set up some kind of activities to follow your instincts or your curiosities.
AI WEIWEI

Activity Curiosity Follow Instinct Kind Set Some Way
Paintings can be painted with the left hand, the right hand, someone else’s hand, or many people’s hands. The scale of production is irrelevant to its content.
AI WEIWEI

Content Hand Irrelevant Left Painting Production Scale Someone
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.
AI WEIWEI

Cities Country Talking Local Resident Spent Time
I think my stance and my way of life is my most important art.
AI WEIWEI

Art Important Most Stance Thinking Way
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.
AI WEIWEI

Country Dream Extraordinary Game Gather Moment Week Year
We literally lived underground. We dug a hole and lived there for years. My father cleaned public toilets, even though he was a highly respected poet.
AI WEIWEI

Cleaned Highly Hole Literally Lived Poet Respected Toilet Underground Yera
After I came back [to China], there was still a long period of time when I felt I had nothing to do.
AI WEIWEI

China Long Periods
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.
AI WEIWEI

Anything Country Crazy Meaningful Think Thinking Wrong
That’s why I always question this sense. The feeling of home really requires a lot of trust. It requires you to identify with it, which I always find myself very contradictory to.
AI WEIWEI

Contradictory Feeling Home Identity Question Require Sense Trust
I think of art as coming from daily life, daily experience. I think it’s very important not to have it become work for some kind of elite circle.
AI WEIWEI

Art Circle Coming Experience Important Thinking Work
The rest of the world understands little about China’s changes and the possibilities and crises that come with them.
AI WEIWEI

Country Crises Little Possibility Rest Understand World
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.
AI WEIWEI

Central Culture Everything Government Make Understanding

It’s the place they take you before they give you over to the judicial system. You stay there for a year or two and they make you really suffer to confess everything.

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It’s the place they take you before they give you over to the judicial system. You stay there for a year or two and they make you really suffer to confess everything.

Related Topics

Popular Authors

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