Ai Weiwei

"On the Internet, people do not know each other, they don’t have common leaders, sometimes not even a common political goal. But they come together on certain issues. I think that is a miracle. It never happened in the past. Without the Internet, I would not even be Ai Weiwei today. I would just be an artist somewhere doing my shows."

"As an artist, I am very familiar with how to show the details, how to transform them into a language people can understand. They [the government] know that the Internet is a strong force, unbearable for them."

"If a nation cannot face its past, it has no future."

"During my detention, they kept asking me: Ai Weiwei, what is the reason you have become like this today? My answer is: First, I refuse to forget. My parents, my family, their whole generation and my generation all paid a great deal in the struggle for freedom of speech. Many people died just because of one sentence or even one word. Somebody has to take responsibility for that."

"It doesn’t matter where I am—China will stay in me. I don’t know how far I can still walk on this road and what is the limit."

"There were thousands of moving messages. People sent money from their first month’s salary. Others said: This is my retirement payment—take it. This is the money for my next pair of shoes—take it. It was very important for me to see and hear those things. Normally you do not see the warmth, humor, care and generosity of the people while writing a blog. You just feel like you are walking in a dark tunnel and you feel alone."

"I definitely know people who are shameless enough to give up basic values. I see this kind of art, and when I see it I feel ashamed. In China they treat art as some form of decoration, a self-indulgence. It is pretending to be art. It looks like art. It sells like art. But it is really a piece of shit.""

"They detained me for 81 days, but they never killed me. They clearly told me: 'If we were in the Cultural Revolution, you would have been killed 100 times.' They said: 'We have already improved.' I said: 'I thank you very much. Yes, you have improved. Not because you are really willing to improve yourself, but only because improvement is a matter of surviving.'"

"Do they want me to stay? Do they want me to leave? Do they want me to hang myself? To kill myself? What do they want?"

"Nothing. Jail is about nothing. Completely blank."

"This is something you can never erase. It leaves a scar on you."

"My voice is not for me. Every time I make a sentence I think how many people for how many generations had a voice that no one could hear. At most they will be remembered as numbers; in many cases, even numbers don’t exist."

"It’s hard to recover. You become not so innocent. You become, in a way, more sophisticated, which I think you shouldn’t. We should all have more simple happiness . . . . You become bitter."

"Maybe there is something I got from it. Maybe you also start to be clear on certain things."

"Every day I think, this will be the day I get taken in again . . . ."

"I think I have this responsibility to my father’s generation, and especially future generations."

"I don’t really care that much about if I want to be more successful or less successful in art, because I never think life and art should be separate. What’s life if you don’t have conversation and joy and anger?"

"Citizens should bear the responsibility to act."

"They [the government] cannot stop people from communicating freely, to get information and to express themselves. When they do that, this nation is not a right place to live. They sacrifice generations of people’s opportunities. This is a crime."

"I cannot ever accept the kind of conditions where you can sacrifice someone’s rights."

"To express yourself needs a reason, but expressing yourself is the reason."

"I’m an artist who is always looking for what is possible. I’m always looking to extend the boundaries."

"They [the government] really want to maintain power. At the same time, they refuse to communicate. They refuse to have good intentions. They refuse to be sincere. How can that last?"

"We need clear rules to play the game. We need to have respect for the law. If you play a chess game but after two or three moves you can change the rules, how can people play with you? Of course you will win, but after 60 years you will still be a bad player because you never meet anyone who can challenge you. What kind of game is that? Is that interesting? This game is not right, but who is going to say, 'Hey, let’s play fairly?'"

"Later I became very involved in writing. I really enjoyed that moment of writing. People would pass around my sentences. That was a feeling I never had before. It was like a bullet out of the gun."

"In a society like this there is no negotiation, no discussion, except to tell you that power can crush you any time they want—not only you, your whole family and all people like you."

"Tax crimes should be investigated by the tax bureau, not through secret police detention."

"The biggest crime of a dictatorship is to eradicate human feelings from people."

"Twitter is the people’s tool, the tool of the ordinary people, people who have no other resources."

"I am very much interested in the so-called useless object. I mean, it takes perfect craftsmanship, beautiful material carefully measured and crafted, but at the same time it’s really useless."

"Very few people know why art sells so high. I don’t even know."

"The individual under this kind of life, with no rights, has absolutely no power in this land. How can they even ask you for creativity? Or imagination, or courage or passion?"

"My current situation is, I always want to find a new possibility. China is in a changing stage, and that puts me in a very difficult situation, because anytime a new condition is announced there is a lot of struggle between the new and the old. So the establishment really becomes extremely nervous because they are refusing to meet very basic human rights or values. I don’t know how long I can still struggle in China, but I will try my best. Because this is a land I am very familiar with, and we have been in the same kind of struggle for generations. I think it’s a time for change.""

"I think the government [will] lose the battle. Because for a nation to develop, the government needs to correct the information, they need to have a space for people to be involved, to discuss, to participate in the change. Otherwise, I don’t think they can really last in this kind of development, because economically it goes so fast but politically it stays the same as many, many years ago. I think even the government senses that this is impossible."

"The government computer has one button: delete."

"The art always wins. Anything can happen to me, but the art will stay."

"[My family] suffer so much. My mother was much older when I came out [of detention]. She had problems with her hearing and high blood pressure. But they still support me. When you make somebody disappear and you don’t announce it to the family, what is this? You make people desperate and bring them close to death. If our cat or dog is lost, it makes us desperately want to know where it is—so for humans disappearing, you can barely imagine the pain. What kind of society is this? If a society cannot even support somebody like me, then people ask: Who is under protection, then? That’s why there is such support for me. It is not because I am so beautiful or so charming. People feel, This guy is fighting for us."

"They know too many things they should not know and they do not know some things they need to know."

"Freedom of expression is a very essential condition for me to make any art. Also, it is an essential value for my life. I have to protect this right and also to fight for the possibility."

"Stupidity can win for a moment, but it can never really succeed because the nature of humans is to seek freedom. Rulers can delay that freedom, but they cannot stop it."

"I don’t want the next generation to fight the same fight as I did."

"I’m so fearful, that’s not fearless... I act more brave because I know the danger’s really there. If you don’t act, the danger becomes stronger."

"Once you’ve tasted freedom, it stays in your heart and no one can take it. Then, you can be more powerful than a whole country."

"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."

"I have to respect my life, and free expression is part of my life. I can never really silence myself."

"I have the responsibility to let the people know what happened to me, and did I commit the crime or if I didn’t, what is the real accusation? Why am I in this condition today? I think it reflects our human condition in this piece of land, and if I don’t bear some responsibility . . . . many, many people, their voice can never be heard."

"The frustration mainly comes from trying to understand what they really want. Also, you cannot understand how can such a large nation maintain its so-called stability by doing something very unlawful. I mean, how can they possibly manage to stabilize the whole social condition by not [acting with] justice and fairness."

"It’s really life and death [not art].When they tell you your mother is 80 years old but you cannot see her again, you can never call it performance art. Or when your son is three, and they tell you that when you are released he will be in his teens and can never recognize you as a father. You feel terrible inside, to lose those chances. Each day, they tell you, 'You will spend your life day after day the same, minute after minute the same. You just have to pay [with] your life for this kind of so-called freedom that you are fighting for.' There is no sense of justice there. Why do I have to do this with them? Why do I have to argue or play this game?""

"Creativity is part of human nature. It can only be untaught."

"I feel powerless all the time, but I regain my energy by making a very small difference that won’t cost me much."