Contemporary art and the [Communist] Party are an impossible situation. It’s like oil and water—they can never mix. - Ai Weiwei

The officials want China to be seen as a cultured, creative nation, but in this anti-liberal political society everything outside the direct control of the state is seen as a potential threat.

Neither fairness nor justice, neither reality nor humanity can be simulated or manipulated by wires or remote controls.

I am always trying to find how to get the message through. [In Munich] we custom-made five thousand backpacks like the ones of those students [who died in Sichuan] to construct a simple sentence [spoken by the] mother of a dead student. It was: 'She has been happily living in this world for seven years.'