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culture as a vehicle for grounding theory and ideology in visible forms of expression.
Father would tell us then, consolingly, that the forest was the wind’s home: every night, after its busy labors, the wind needed to come home, just as we did. In his eyes, the wind was the mountain’s oldest citizen, and I was its youngest.
We stacked the books up next to a bonfire, and one by one I tore out the pages and tossed them into the fire. Like drowning ghosts, they writhed in the heat and were swallowed by flames. At the moment they turned to ash, a strange force took hold of me. From then on, that force would gradually extend its command of my body and mind, until it matured into a form that even the strongest enemy would find intimidating. It was a commitment to reason, to a sense of beauty—these things are unbending, uncompromising, and any effort to suppress them is bound to provoke resistance.
No one could suffer more than me I am loyal to the epoch and commit my life to it, but I am silent Against my will, like a captive Wordless on my way to execution.
The United States likes to think of itself as a melting pot, but it’s more like a vat of sulfuric acid, dissolving variety without a qualm.
I never fall apart, because I never fall together.
Disdain is a chasm that no power can cross; it makes space for itself by subverting order.
Although he never tried to influence my decisions and never asked anything of me, like a star in the sky or a tree in a field he was always there as a compass point, and in a quiet and mysterious way he helped me to navigate in a direction all my own. By the very absence of explicit guidance, a spiritual connection was forged between us; Father, in his way, protected me.
To me, art is in a dynamic relationship with reality, with our way of life and attitude to life, and it should not be placed in a separate compartment. I have no interest in art that tries to keep itself distinct from reality.
If you don’t have the right to raise questions, you have no real freedom, and I refused to accept the idea that the state’s authority can’t be opposed, challenged, or interrogated. In the face of power, I would always be at a disadvantage, I knew, but I was a born contrarian, and there’s no other way for me to live except by taking an oppositional stance.
The West has an obligation to reaffirm human rights, for otherwise its conduct is tantamount to a neocolonialist exploitation of developing nations.
“What do you think about Ai Weiwei being taken away?” I asked. His answer took me aback. “That was no big deal,” he said. “They were doing a commercial for you, to make you more famous.”
Of a thousand years of joys and sorrows Not a trace can be found You who are living, live the best life you can Don’t count on the earth to preserve memory
Self-expression is central to human existence. Without the sound of human voices, without warmth and color in our lives, without attentive glances, Earth is just an insensate rock suspended in space.
