“For me, it is OK as long as I can breathe, as long as my heart is pumping, as long as I can express myself.”

A lot of the time [in the U.S.], I was thinking about how spending time is always questionable or is always the biggest obstacle in my life.

Nationality started as something natural, but we should not be restrained by the old politics that make up these clear lines. It should have its own way of evolving. In some places, it will evolve slower and in others, faster.

Art should live in the heart of the people. Ordinary people should have the same ability to understand art as anybody else. I don’t think art is elite or mysterious.

Through my work and ways of expression, I strive to engage in dialogue with the society that I am living in.

A few thousand are to be built in the next few years, all using taxpayer money. But there is no system, no research, no content, no good programs, no good managers.

I don’t think China should care if this crazy old guy should have a show here or not.

I think art is a very important weapon to achieve human freedom

People have a tendency to become elite rather than to care about the general conditions of the society, which makes me sick. It’s an unbearable condition.

The media is the message. It carries the full intention and the meaning. Once you change it…it’s very disturbing.

We move so fast that memory is something we can only grasp

The intention to separate art from politics is itself a very political intention.

I have always stated I designed the stadium as a toilet seat.

Everyone thinks the Chinese government selected me. Never ever. I was selected by Herzog and de Meuron.

There’s no single artwork I even want to mention or that I can even really think about it to have any feeling, to be proud of it.

I think of art as coming from daily life, daily experience. I think it’s very important not to have it become work for some kind of elite circle.

We never really see the global situation as a total situation. Today’s political leaders are still lacking of the vision.

Democracy may not prove in the long run to be as efficient as other forms of government, but it has one saving grace: it allows us to know and say that it isn’t.

In fact, NSF was the leading successful efforts to improve U.S. math and science education long before the Department of Education was even created.

At times of crisis or distress, it’s poems that people turn to. (Poetry) still has a power to speak to people’s feelings, maybe in a way that fiction, because it works in a longer way, can’t.

I’ve lived long enough to have learned, the closer you get to the fire, the more you get burned.

They established their patriotic credentials long ago, and are either supportive of the Bush agenda or know when to keep their traps shut.

In the short term, it would make me happy to go play outside. In the long term, it would make me happier to do well at school and become successful. But in the VERY long term, I know which will make better memories.

Courts have long recognized the federal government’s robust power to inspect people and goods entering the country.

The Arctic and the Antarctic are melting quickly. We may have waited too long to get started. But this is a day for optimism because the battle is fully joined, and the idea that big oil is unbeatable is no longer true.