Red Dust was about the late 1980s; it was a time of burgeoning hopes and opening up and people searching for new ways.

Beijing Coma took me 10 years to finish.

Only when you are aware of the uniqueness of everyones individual body will you begin to have a sense of your own self-worth.

When history is erased, people's moral values are also erased.

Everything I was I carry with me, everything I will belies waiting on the road ahead.

I believe that the power of literature is stronger than the power of tyranny.

China is completely lacking in self-awareness and as someone who has stepped outside that society, I have a responsibility to write about it as I see it.

I left Beijing in 1987, shortly before my books were banned there, but have returned continually.

Tyrannies not only want to control your mind and thoughts but your flesh as well.

What we mean by Tao is the way or course of Nature. This way has nothing good or bad, it is a mere flowing of things following the development and decline attributes of the moment.

The literal meaning of the Chinese characters for revolution is elimination of life

Through error you come to the truth! I am a man because I err! You never reach any truth without making fourteen mistakes and very likely a hundred and fourteen.

Though an angel should write, still 'tis devils must print

To the Elysian shades dismiss my soul, where no carnation fades.

Will is what can make you succeed when your thoughts tell you that you're defeated.

She was no longer wrestling with the grief, but could sit down with it as a lasting companion and make it a sharer in her thoughts.

Woman has this in common with angels, that suffering beings belong especially to her.

You've got to put yourself in positions to take away what can be said.

I'm fascinated by politicians, because I suspect the huge majority of them go into it full of ideas and for the best possible reasons but end up being hijacked.

To be happy is, I guess, the most important thing in life.

Suspicion is a heavy armor and with its weight it impedes more than it protects.