Only the smaller fish pay for the goverment's face-lift. The big ones - they just become bigger and fatter.

Regarding heroism, I grew up in a culture where you learn about heroes and heroines all the time. In a way, when you call someone a hero or heroine, it's the same as calling them a villain.

I think our eyes are trained to look for what we want to see.

The boy will remain a son and never become a father. He will be forgotten by the crowd once his blood is rinsed clean from the ground; his sister will think of him but soon she will forget him, too. He will live on only in Han's memory, a child punished not for his own insincerity but someone else's disbelief.

If I didn't self-censor, I would be in jail, and then I wouldn't be effective at all.

There are people who are willing to work within the system, and people who don't want to work with the system at all.

But loneliness is as delusive a belief in the pertinence of the world as is love: in choosing to feel lonely, as in choosing to love, one carves a space next to oneself to be filled by others - a friend, a lover, a toy poodle, a violinist on the radio.