If you just turn to your paper or television each day, there are thousands of stories that are much more shocking than the gallery artworks.

The deadly weapon against totalitarian society is openness - doing everything very openly on the Internet, letting people know every detail, any little development. Once it is out there, everybody can make their own judgement. [Therefore] holding a trial outside the court. I think that is fairness, that is justice, that is a civil society. Otherwise call it an evil society because everything is hidden.

Behind every political deal in this country, the first casualties are always the ordinary people, who are barely treated as human.

New York has given me a lot, but I still don't consider it home.

People have a tendency to become elite rather than to care about the general conditions of the society, which makes me sick. It's an unbearable condition.

At the moment about 350,000 students return to China from abroad each year - 350,000 young and educated people. I know about them because they know me and often ask me in the street if they can take a selfie with me. These folks are creative and ironic, and the government can ultimately not control what is going on in their heads.

My musician friends are banned from playing concerts in China because they share the same views as I do. My name cannot appear on the web, because my opinion is different from the Party.