If my art has nothing to do with people's pain and sorrow, what is 'art' for?

Somehow, we [ Tan Dun and director Chen Kaige] were all privileged at the time; we could be outside of China. But at the moment, we had no sense of what the future was going to be like.

This week, the world gathers in Beijing for the 2008 Olympic games. This is the extraordinary moment China has been dreaming of for 100 years. People have been longing for this moment, because it symbolises a turning point in China's relationship with the outside world.

The motivation is really to say people can find the game of getting involved interesting and find the problem and really have the passion and the enthusiasm to solve it and move forward, but that's all I know.

There are no outdoor sports as graceful as throwing stones at a dictatorship.

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

If a nation cannot face its past, it has no future.