“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.”

If a master, a wise and experienced man, wields a great weapon, that’s beautiful. He can serve peace with it. But if someone’s emotions are imbalanced, even if he has the best equipment,

Even though everybody who looked at me would call me a Chinese artist, that’s the 1980s. New York in the ’80s was not so interesting.

I think the government regrets having Sina Weibo, but they cannot shut it down. That would definitely be suicidal.

Life is much more interesting when you make a little bit of effort.

And the kind of condition he had when he was in this society – the kind of mistreatment society gave him.

I think Donald Trump should cool down a little bit. To pay more attention to the history. To really understand what U.S.’s value is about. I think, as a president, those things you always have to ask.

As long as I can communicate, I’m not so lonely. If I cannot travel, or do art, or have company, if they take away all my belongings, it doesn’t matter at all.

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.

I want people to see their own power.

It became like a symbolic thing, to be “an artist.” After Duchamp, I realized that being an artist is more about a lifestyle and attitude than producing some product.

I hope that my work expresses my worldview and encourages people to exchange ideas.

Life is art. Art is life. I never separate it.

I think I’m just a traveler. When you walk across a river and there’s no bridge, you build one. I’m used to having to deal with Chinese Communist ideology.

Growing up, my family was an enemy of the state. I have experienced more disappointment than joy, much more sad stories or desperate conditions.

My angst and my insecurity reflect the state’s angst and insecurity. The state is scared too.

I never regret anything.

I don’t believe there’s anything in life you can’t go back and fix.

After a while I started to think of that as an image of something that went a lot deeper than the dead dog, which is you can’t bring back anything to life.

The one hour live debate in the West Wing that we did was one of the most exciting times for me on stage or on camera, because anything could go wrong.

I have always had this mentality because I hated to break anything on the car.

We should not feel embarrassed by our difficulties, only by our failure to grow anything beautiful from them.

Dreams reveal we never quite get ‘over’ anything: it’s all still in there somewhere.

We don’t really learn anything properly until there is a problem, until we are in pain, until something fails to go as we had hoped … We suffer, therefore we think.

It takes a mile before anything happens. And if it was a wrong turn, getting back on course takes even longer.