My dad was dean of fine arts at the university. I was casting bronzes in the school foundry. I was using the university as a playground.

My grandfather, on my father's side, helped to draft one of the first constitutions of China. He was a fairly well-known scholar.

war is not just a victory or loss ... People die.

I saw the Vietnam Veterans Memorial not as an object placed into the earth but as a cut in the earth that has then been polished, like a geode.

When I was very little, we would get letters from China, in Chinese, and they' be censored. We were a very insular little family.

It's funny, as you live through something you're not aware of it.

I though about what death is, what a loss is. A sharp pain that lessens with time, but can never quite heal over. A scar. The idea occurred to me there on the site. Take a knife and cut open the earth, and with time the grass would heal it. As if you cut open the rock and polished it.