There is no such thing as perfect security, only varying levels of insecurity.

It's true that the human body is more vulnerable than the products of the human mind. We need to protect artists and journalists people to allow them to work.

The frustrating part of being tagged 'controversial' is people go looking for trouble where there isn't any to look for.

It just requires so much of you, and most of the time you feel dumb.

A poet's work is to name the unnameable, to point at frauds, to take sides, start arguments, shape the world, and stop it going to sleep.

Mo Yan is the Chinese equivalent of the Soviet Russian apparatchik writer Mikhail Sholokhov: a patsy of the regime.

Too many people spouting too many words, and in the end those words will turn to bullets and stones.