“To experience poetry is to see over and above reality. It is to discover that which is beyond the physical, to experience another life and another level of feeling.”

If you don’t act, the danger becomes stronger.

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.

I don’t think there is a distinct change, because in the West I’m not a person who can serve his purpose.

You know about the fantasies related to the classics, but there is no real discussion about today’s life and no discussion of the real conditions – which is really sickening.

I’m totally independent. I don’t bear any responsibility to any system.

Life is never guaranteed to be safe, so we better use it while we are still in good condition.

For years, I refused to go to any openings, not even my own.

I was in the most restricted prison in China, the most tough. The design of the prison is modeled for internal crimes of the Communist party, so it’s like a mafia family’s law. It’s independent to the law this nation openly applies.

I grew up in a desert, which has no kind of imagination.

Being an artist is more of a mindset, a way of seeing things; it is no longer so much about producing something.

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.

As a human being, member of society, you must clearly state your mind. It’s a responsibility. It is the way you identify yourself otherwise you don’t know who you are and why you are here.

During the days in detention, I thought most about the moon.

I have to respect my life, and free expression is part of my life. I can never really silence myself.

Even if there have been setbacks during these past years, China is changing. China’s society is opening.

I always want people to be confused, to be shocked or realize something later.

Most people are such fools that it is really no great compliment to say that someone is above the average.

Everything above and below is one unity.

Her earth is rich, yet the products that come from above and below the soil continue to enrich, not Africans predominantly, but groups and individuals who operate to Africa’s impoverishment.

Knowledge is, indeed, that which, next to virtue, truly and essentially raises one man above another.

Over and above communication and vigilance, there are two factors I have always mentioned. They are sleep, and a sense of history.

In England Parliament is above the law. In America the law is above Congress.

The dance is always danced above the hollow place, above the terrible abyss.

I think the British have the distinction above all other nations of being able to put new wine into old bottles without bursting them.