Hopefully, other successes aren't like me. It carries much more meaning to other people; my success story is irrelevant. It doesn't make any sense.

New York was not a romantic city at [80th]. Nobody knows who you are and you don't have to care about anybody else. It's a very cold city, I should say.

In the '80s, you couldn't walk in the neighborhood without looking back to see if anyone was following you. You had your key in your hand before you got to your apartment and you'd rush in so you didn't have to stop.

Just look at the statistics: Each university has tens of thousands of applications for students who want to be in art school, but they can only accept a few hundred.

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.

I always thought that in modern history Chinese people are like a dish of sand, never really close together. But I think a dish of sand is a good metaphor because we have the Internet. We don't have to be physically united. You can be an individual and have your own set of values but join others in certain struggles. There is nothing more powerful than that.

As a total activity - I practice curating, art, architecture, writing, and publishing all together. I still act as a living creature.