“Each year, more people want to become artists.”

Even if I have hundreds of things to do, the disconnected feeling is still there because it is very hard to find a real purpose of life.

It is not an easy job to govern China, I am aware of that. There are crises and emergencies all the time, we might not even be aware of some. But I am afraid we’ll have to wait and observe precisely what the government is up to.

It is not an easy job to govern China, I am aware of that.

How to become a really modern society when today we are so – as a human being, we feel so powerful. We have high technology and a superb way of controlling our life. And at the same time, in many ways we are so primitive.

You only have temporary curiosity, amusement, and challenges, but that does not necessarily mean you are really convinced that it’s necessary or that it’s not even worth to do it.

The jobs for 7 million university graduates every year, the immense corruption: Even some Western governments would have to scramble to find solutions to such problems.

Choices after waking up: To be true or to lie? To take action or be brainwashed? To be free or be jailed?

No state or society can claim to have established human rights once and for all.

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.

It also makes humanity much more safe. If we see pureness somewhere as something to be desired, the trouble starts.

I never think any place is better than others.

Society becomes very destructive.

Creativity is the power to act.

We are not on – even just a step away from the most brutal and primitive crudity. To be very crude on those issues, which is always challenges and we always have to look at the situation like a mirror, to draw some understanding.

It’s not really an ideology, but a method of control. But China’s problems are not just China’s problems – they’re human problems. Humanity has always worked better when you see it as one.

Selling high or low doesn’t mean anything. It has to do purely with the market.

After four years at the United Nations I sometimes yearn for the peace and tranquility of a political convention.

Let’s not forget: This all began when you had eight- and nine-year-old children writing graffiti on walls.

We have a legal system, and this is not something that happens all the time.

Then I tell them: Don’t keep attacking us as you have done for the last years.

We want to have good ties with the Iranians, but if they want good ties with us

In a thousand years we shall all forget The things that trouble us now.

Normally, you have all this knowledge from all the films that you’ve done that you’ve accumulated over the years

I actually had less time and the exact same budget on Hairspray, which was few years ago and this is a much bigger movie [then Rock of Ages]. That’s the way studios do it now.