“There’s no such thing as “fixed” culture. China is also becoming more global. Its problems are becoming international problems, becoming German problems, becoming American problems.”

Life is art. Art is life. I never separate it. I don’t feel that much anger. I equally have a lot of joy.

Any individual can contribute its own belief. And our society or even our government are made by the people. The people would have the final voice, but it requires each individual to act. If we don’t act, then the result is very clear.

I saw [Allen Ginsberg] more as an old man who liked poetry and who had a lot of physical and emotional problems. We liked our time together.

These are nonviolent people who have lost their freedom simply because they expressed their ideas….In truth, they are heroes of our time.

I will bring 1,001 Chinese to participate as my artwork there – any Chinese who is a Chinese passport holder and over eighteen years old could apply through my blog.

Self-censorship is insulting to the self. Timidity is a hopeless way forward.

I don’t think my father had a direct influence on me, but I do think, more or less, I was influenced by his independent individualism.

Chinese government is very clearly losing power in every aspect, but trying to fix up all the problems or potential problems.

The Internet changes the structure of society all the time — this massiveness made of individuals.

You can never know what is and what is not powerful, but you can always find out what the powerful people are scared of.

I’m an artist who is always looking for what is possible. I’m always looking to extend the boundaries.

When you have strict censorship of the internet, young students cannot receive a full education. Their view of the world is imbalanced. There can be no true discussion of the issues.

The rest of the world understands little about China’s changes and the possibilities and crises that come with them.

To the media, I have become a symbolic figure, critical of China. According to the government, I am a dangerous threat.

Hopefully, other successes aren’t like me. It carries much more meaning to other people; my success story is irrelevant. It doesn’t make any sense.

Each year, more people want to become artists.

The right answer on raises is you have to be formal. You have to be formal to save your own culture.

You don’t go to a town to present the play and have applause at the end of it, but that’s benign conquest. It’s a glorious way of exploring other landscapes and other cultures in a very life-affirming way.

This is what they have suppressed so long. This is why they are so afraid of the psychedelics, because they understand that once you touch the inner core of your own and someone else’s being you can’t be led into thing-fetishes and consumerism.

I have no interest in artists who are purely affirmative, who’ve made a commercialized fetish of the culture’s stupidity.

I think that, we as a culture, feel like politics is one sector of our lives that can feel apart from our personal lives and the cultural things we’re interested in and the sports we watch. It feels like this separate, different thing.

We live in a youth-obsessed, aesthetically obsessed culture. That is no more evident than in the film industry.

Having grown up in a racist culture where 2 and 2 are not 5, I have found life to be incredibly theatrical and theater to be profoundly lifeless.

I don’t know why it is that we need to denigrate, to knock down. It’s so sick.