In a society like this there is no negotiation, no discussion, except to tell you that power can crush you any time they want — not only you, your whole family and all people like you.

If artists cannot speak up for human dignity or rights, then who else will do it?

Everyone thinks the Chinese government selected me. Never ever. I was selected by Herzog and de Meuron.

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. 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.

[Cultural departments] don't care about culture. Maybe they're the furthest from the people who understand culture.

I don't belong to a working system. They only select people if you belong to one so you can be controlled.

To experience poetry is to see over and above reality. It is to discover that which is beyond the physical, to experience another life and another level of feeling. It is to wonder about the world, to understand the nature of people and, most importantly, to be shared with another, old or young, known or unknown.