“The name Bei Dao was actually given to me with the help of friends. When we were publishing our unofficial magazine, Today, we wanted to avoid being harassed by the police so we were trying to think of names that we could use. It was done very casually.”

Being a poet in the States is quite different from being one in China, because in the States poetry depends on the universities for its support. They finance the poets and help them get published. That isn’t so in China. But overall it is the same. You can’t change society with poetry.

On the one hand poetry is useless. It can’t change the world materially. On the other hand it is a basic part of human existence. It came into the world when humans did. It’s what makes human beings human.

As a writer, the most important thing for me is to continue to write, no matter where I am.

Freedom is nothing but the distance between the hunter and the hunted.

Perhaps the final hour is come I have left no testament Only a pen, for my mother I am no hero in an age without heroes I just want to be a man.

I don’t think of writing my poems for China or for the world. I mainly think of a small audience of friends and people I know. I am writing for that small group. They are not necessarily going to be able to read it, but that’s what I have in mind when I write.

Bei Dao became the most well-known name for me because of certain criticism of my work. Bei Dao was the name under which my work was criticized. So I became more well-known under Bei Dao than under the other names.

Writing is the thing that sustains me and keeps me going. It is a form of self-preservation for me.

In the world I am Always a stranger I do not understand its language It does not understand my silence

If we were to place our power at the service of our imaginations rather than our primate politics we would create a civilization worthy of the name.

I have a theory that you can make any sentence seem profound by writing the name of a dead philosopher at the end of it.

Like putting a name to my problems would solve anything

Love taught me to die with dignity that I might come forth anew in splendor. Born once of flesh, then again of fire

I loved her. I loved her with a something so fierce I couldn’t even name it.

Nor bring, to see me cease to live, Some doctor full of phrase and fame, To shake his sapient head, and give The ill he cannot cure a name.

Love is merely the name for the desire and pursuit of the whole.

If names be not correct, language is not in accordance with the truth of things.