“If civil society has nobody who protects the law, then what kind of society is that?”

Now many enterprises are made by individuals, so the attitude has started to change.

The whole Chinese system – not just the political leadership, the military too, the whole power structure, our education system, the whole of society – is suffering from being cut off from the free flow of information.

I lived there [ in New York City] as an artist, but never as a Chinese artist.

As a total activity – I practice curating, art, architecture, writing, and publishing all together. I still act as a living creature.

For artists and intellectuals today, what is most needed is to be clear about social responsibility, because that is what most people automatically give up. Just to protect yourself as an individual is very political.

I think the pearls – one is a necklace, and another you have five hundred pounds of pearls, which may be one million pearls in a bowl – really show a kind of [society] condition.

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.

So nobody really thought much about quality. Why should they? The world bought everything America produced. It was a prescription for disaster.

Nobody sees a flower really; it is so small. We haven’t time, and to see takes time – like to have a friend takes time.

We are not going to be able to operate our Spaceship Earth successfully nor for much longer unless we see it as a whole spaceship and our fate as common. It has to be everybody or nobody.

Each doctor makes a much, much more important job than I do, but at the end, nobody talks about him. We all know about it, but we don’t really think about it.

When we want to have our own style of living, it is nobody’s business but ours. What we do in private is our private business.

They shouldn’t make the departure of a dancer so tear jerky because nobody’s going to war.

It needs time. Nobody wants to hear it, but that’s the truth: if you want to have success in the future, you have to be ready to work now.

… Grateful Dead – that’s it !! … nobody in the band liked it, (the name) I didn’t like it, either, but it got around that that was one of the candidates for our new name, and everyone else said, ‘Yeah, that’s great.’