“I spent most of my time thinking, because I didn’t have enough energy to do anything else.”

She was still there inside me now, just as she always was: a life put on hold, a memory I didn’t know how to handle.

I love feeling the rhythm of other people’s lives. It’s like traveling.

It was at once a miracle and the most natural thing in the world.

it’ll be this kind of deep blue”she said. “The kind of color that somehow sucks your eyes and your ears and all your words -the color of a completely closed-in night

To the extent that I had come to understand that despair does not necessarily result in annihilation, that one can go on as usual in spite of it, I had become hardened. Was this what it means to be an adult, to live with ugly ambiguities? I didn’t like it, but it made it easier to go on.

On nights like this when the air is so clear, you end up saying things you ordinarily wouldn’t. Without even noticing what you’re doing, you open up your heart and just start talking to the person next to you-you talk as if you have no audience but the glittering stars, far overhead.

Truly great people emit a light that warms the hearts of those around them. When that light has been put out, a heavy shadow of despair descends.

It was so gorgeous it almost felt like sadness.

When things get really bad, you take comfort in the placeness of a place.

I had been walking in silence for so long,I had almost forgotten what my own voice sounded like.My knees were tired;my toes were beginning to ache.

Things look different depending on your perspective. As I see it, fighting to bridge those gaps isn’t what really matters. The most important thing is to know them inside and out, as differences, and to understand why certain people are the way they are.

People who are going to get along really well know it almost as soon as they meet. You spend a little while talking and everyone starts to feel this conviction, you’re all equally sure that you’re at the beginning of something good. That’s how it is when you meet people you’re going to be with for a long time.

Everything that had happened was shockingly beautiful, enough to make you crazy.

In the uncertain ebb and flow of time and emotions, much of one’s life history is etched in the senses. And things of no particular importance, or irreplaceable things, can suddenly resurface in a café one winter night.

I was happy. I loved the night, I loved t so much it almost hurt. In the night everything seemed possible. I wasn’t sleepy at all.

I saw the sky and sea and sand and the flickering flames of the bonfire through my tears. All at once, it rushed into my head with tremendous speed, and made me feel dizzy. It was beautiful. Everything that happened was shockingly beautiful, enough to make you crazy.

[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.

Although the Nasser revolution of 1952 was secular, the culture remained deeply religious – but it was a faith of moderation and tolerance.

Now I’ve come to such a mixed culture: America, Europe, South America, Africa. And the politics are changing everywhere all the time and becoming even more unpredictable.

[Shanghai Biennale] has been my attitude for as long as I’ve been practicing art and other cultural-related activities.

I don’t personally feel any association with a kind of culture related to state, or culture related to power, which I think is always disgusting.

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

Jazz does not belong to one race or culture, but is a gift that America has given the world.