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

This so-called contemporary art is not a form, but a philosophy of society.

If there is no freedom of expression, then the beauty of life is lost. Participation in a society is not an artistic choice, it’s a human need.

I wouldn’t say I’ve become more radical: I was born radical.

I call on people to be ‘obsessed citizens,’ forever questioning and asking for accountability. That’s the only chance we have today of a healthy and happy life.

What is important is that we actively express our thoughts and wishes, in every realm that we can access.

The [China] government has improved in the last years. Of course, the structure is still the same; there’s still a one-party system and strong censorship.

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.

Did you weep for the children who lost their dear loved ones and pray for the ones who don’t know?

I don’t know how many of you have ever met Dijkstra, but you probably know that arrogance in computer science is measured in nano-Dijkstras.

Who knows what innovation, what freshness, what new insights from the Spirit will emerge.

I don’t know where this Arctic wind has come from but it’s freezing!

I am saddened that it is politically inconvenient to acknowledge what everyone knows: the Iraq war is largely about oil.

Wherever God has planted you, you must know how to flower – translated from a French saying

Most people will never know anything beyond what they see with their own two eyes.

A true friend never asks of you what they know you would never ask of them.