So-called Chinese art and culture is under control of the Party. They exist to serve the official agenda. I call it fake art and culture.

Your own acts tell the world who you are and what kind of society you think it should be.

A small act is worth a million thoughts.

Creativity is part of human nature. It can only be untaught.

The art always wins. Anything can happen to me, but the art will stay.

The world is not changing if you don’t shoulder the burden of responsibility.

Maybe being powerful means to be fragile.

Everything is art. Everything is politics.

I think art certainly is the vehicle for us to develop any new ideas, to be creative, to extend our imagination, to change the current conditions.

I think optimism is whether you are still exhilarated by life, whether you are curious, whether you still believe there is possibility.

The purpose of art is the fight for freedom.

It is of great advantage to the student of any subject to read the original memoirs on that subject, for science is always most completely assimilated when it is in the nascent state...

The ego is like a clever monkey, which can co-opt anything, even the most spiritual practices, so as to expand itself. (155)

Loving is like any other art-craft where the masters have carefully practiced and where the novices have languished in their carelessness.

It's not that I'm not grateful for all this attention. It's just that fame and fortune ought to add up to more than fame and fortune.

Many of today's verses are prose and bad prose.

TPP is dead anyway, and similar deals in the eurozone are going nowhere.

If you’re comparing the badness of two words and you won’t even say one of them [the n-word], that’s the worse word.

By writing I can live in ways that I could not survive.

Whatever you have been given is what someone needs.

To all the fantasy owners who drafted me: You're welcome.