Prose is like a window; fiction is like a door. But it is not uncommon that he who should come in through the door jumps in through the window.

Impressions are like pearls; ideas are like the string that turns the pearls into a necklace. The string is invisible, but it is not dispensable and cannot be broken.

The first principle of modern cultures may be their connectedness. Culture is like wind and wind knows no boundary or center. Once there is a center, wind becomes a whirlwind.

Growth will be slower, no one denies that. But the question is: Where are the chances and opportunities now? I see some positive and some negative trends.

Many Chinese entrepreneurs are now donating for education; others support foundations in health care and research. None of us wants to be the richest guy in the cemetery.

Isolation means a lack of growth. I grew up in China at a time when the country was completely isolated. That era is over.

Thomas Hardy once advised us to record impressions more and to express ideas less. Now and then I would remember this advice.

Did you ever find that there is room between the two opposing rules of a paradox? That space between two almost opposite rules is the ground where I play and write.

Chinese no longer crave so much for food and accommodation, but they do crave democracy. I stand by that. I don't know which model China will follow.

I feel that it would be tedious for a person to have only one life. It would be much better to have two or three lives going on simultaneously.

What is art in the final analysis? Art is the shining forth of one's interiority.

They got to live before they can afford to die.

Shed the yesteryears, embrace the present as a gift and the future as a possibility

Taxes are important. President Bush's tax proposals leave no rich person behind. Voters approve of President Bush helping the kind of people they wish they were one of.

Routine feeds the illusion of safety.

I had to work out that it was something that could move, without having everybody in spray painted leotards.

C is peculiar in a lot of ways, but it, like many other successful things, has a certain unity of approach that stems from development in a small group.

Bob Dylan is great. Ive been compared to him a lot. I think when people see a person on stage with a guitar they just think, Bob Dylan!

Advice: Don’t wait until someone you have issues with — especially someone you’re related to — gets shot before you work it out.

Ballet is sort of a mystery to me. And I don't want to unravel that mystery.

There is no kind of idleness by which we are so easily seduced as that which dignifies itself by the appearance of business.