My favorite word? It’s 'act.' - Ai Weiwei

Being an artist is more of a mindset, a way of seeing things; it is no longer so much about producing something.

[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.

It became like a symbolic thing, to be "an artist." After Duchamp, I realized that being an artist is more about a lifestyle and attitude than producing some product.