"I’ve never planned any part of my career—except being an artist. And I was pushed into that corner because I thought being an artist was the only way to have a little freedom."

"But censorship by itself doesn’t work. It is, as Mao said, about the pen and the gun."

"At midnight they can come into your room and take you away. They can put a black hood on you, take you to a secret place and interrogate you, trying to stop what you’re doing. They threaten people, your family, saying: 'Your children won’t find jobs.'"

"The Internet is uncontrollable. And if the Internet is uncontrollable, freedom will win. It’s as simple as that."

"China might seem quite successful in its controls, but it has only raised the water level. It’s like building a dam: it thinks there is more water so it will build higher. But every drop of water is still in there. It doesn’t understand how to let the pressure out. It builds up a way to maintain control and push the problem to the next generation."

"But the internet is like a tree that is growing. The people will always have the last word – even if someone has a very weak, quiet voice."

"This simple form of repression, of using the method of not letting anyone speak, will never succeed."

"The most unfair things that could have happened in a society fell upon a blind man. This is something that no one can accept or explain away with any excuse. Everyone will ask: 'Do we actually have to exist in a society like this?'"

"I will never leave China, unless I am forced to. Because China is mine. I will not leave something that belongs to me in the hands of people I do not trust."

"China has not established the rule of law and thus there is no justice."

"I have no sense of why I lost my freedom and if you do not know how you lost something, how can you protect it?""

"The 81 days of detention were a nightmare. I am not unique; it happened to many people in China. Conditions were extreme, created by a system that thinks it is above the law and has become a kind of monstrous machine. There were so many moments when I felt desperate and hopeless. But still, the next morning, I heard the birds singing."

"I often ask myself if I am afraid of being detained again. I love freedom as much as anybody else, maybe more than most. But it is a tragedy to live your life in fear. It is worse than actually losing your freedom."

"You know, if they can do this to me they can do this to anybody, and they have been doing this for over sixty years . . . . it’s a very strange world."

"A fine line separates Chinese intellectuals and professors from the political gangsters who protect them."

"Block [my blog] if you want, but I cannot self-censor, because that is the only reason I have the blog. We both know this is a game. You have to play your part, and I have to play mine."

"Modernism represents a true kind of living. Modernism is not about form or method or the works of a few artists, but rather about a necessary way of living. And only this kind of lifestyle can save China, because if we don’t have modernism, then we will die under the grasp of one or another ideology. Modernism at least says that every person is free and needs to honestly encounter his own life."

"No autocracy can lead people to believe that they are living in harmony and happiness."

"The Internet is the best thing that could have happened to China."

"We should leave behind discrimination, because it is narrow-minded and ignorant, denies contact and warmth, and corrodes mankind’s belief that we can better ourselves. The only way to avoid misunderstanding, war, and bloodshed is to defend freedom of expression and to communicate with sincerity, concern, and good intentions."

"I know there are tigers in the mountain, but I still go to the mountain."