"I think people have this romanticism of the homeland, and that’s just not the reality for me. Every time I go back to China, I feel more American than ever, so it’s this question of, ‘Well, where is home?’ We’re always searching for it and never fully fitting in."

"Since my childhood I have enjoyed reading Martial Arts fiction. I write it myself first and foremost for my own pleasure, and then for the pleasure of my readers (there is also, of course, the financial reward...). I am just a storyteller, like the professional storytellers of the Song dynasty. I believe Martial Arts fiction is like Peking Opera, or ballad-singing, or dancing, or music—its main function is to give pleasure."

"State censorship was an obvious assault on our creativity, but few Chinese writers actually acknowledge the serious and endemic issue of self-censorship. For me it was as clear as the operation of the state's apparatus – without self-censorship an artist in China would get nowhere and had no voice."

"[About Yayoi Kusama:] Classifying her work as 'art brut' is simplistic and unfair. For me she represents the history of womankind. A sexually violated, politically annihilated, socially ignored and emotionally deprived feminine life. One of her works is entitled Self Obliteration, which seems to sum up a woman's utter despair, in life, in art, in anything real in the human world."

"Nature both creates and destroys."

"We now live in an age in which we are all information rich and experience poor."

"My growing environmental awareness only added more fuel to the argument for having no children. And the logic of never-ending consumption didn't just harm the environment, it killed people too."

"I Am China is a parallel story about two Chinese lovers in exile – the external and internal exile that I had felt since leaving China."

"I could only see myself making a living through writing, as I had done in China. But should I write in Chinese here, a foreign land, or enrol in a language class and study English grammar? If I continued to write in Chinese I would have no readers here. Besides, I would never create a community of fellow artists and thinkers in my Western life while speaking Chinese."

"I feel the pride of being a Chinese everywhere, the Five-starred Red Flag is respected worldwide."

"More than 120 takes. Those kinds of things ... You [say] "Wow, Jackie's good." It's not good. You can do it. Except, do you have the patience or not?"

"...in the 10 years after Hong Kong's return to Chinese rule ... I'm not sure if it's good to have freedom or not... If you're too free, you're like the way Hong Kong is now. It's very chaotic. Taiwan is also chaotic... I'm gradually beginning to feel that we Chinese need to be controlled. If we're not being controlled, we'll just do what we want."

"I'm jealous that you are CCP [Communist Party of China] members. The CCP is really great. The CCP's promises don't take 100 years, they are fulfilled in decades. I want to be a CCP member."

"I have the feeling there are two dates in history when the whole world seemed to be working together perfectly to achieve certain things, when it beat to the pulse of chaotic events that erupted everywhere simultaneously, as if by chance: 1969 and 1989."