“A nation that has no music and no fairytales is a tragedy.”

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.

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 can’t just only be on reality TV and show everything when it’s the fairy princess, fairytale, and then not take my hits when I have to.

Well, you know, ‘Spaceballs’ is a weird combination, because it’s a simple, sweet little fairytale, and it’s crazy and out-there and making fun of and taking apart sci-fi, ‘Star Wars’, and ‘Star Trek’.

You are half fairytale, half girl.

Fairytales are full of impossible tasks.

A safe fairyland is untrue to all worlds.

If you see a fairy tell her I called.

Fairytales are what you make of them.

We would look with scorn at witch mothers who build towers but not at princes who lust after caged women.