Every parting gives a foretaste of death; every remeeting a foretaste of the resurrection. That is why even people who are indifferent to each other rejoice so much if they meet again after twenty or thirty years of separation.
Often a man endures for several years, submits and suffers the cruellest punishments, and then suddenly breaks out over some minute trifle, almost nothing at all.
Present global culture is a kind of arrogant newcomer. It arrives on the planetary stage following four and a half billion years of other acts, and after looking about for a few thousand years declares itself in possession of eternal truths. But in a world that is changing as fast as ours, this is a prescription for disaster. No nation, no religion, no economic system, no body of knowledge, is likely to have all the answers for our survival. There must be many social systems that would work far better than any now in existence. In the scientific tradition, our task is to find them.
I'm doing quite a few things now. In one day, I will go to Kassel, Germany, for a documentary project I've been preparing for half a year. I will bring 1,001 Chinese to participate as my artwork there - any Chinese who is a Chinese passport holder and over eighteen years old could apply through my blog. I'm just bringing them to Kassel to see the art show, and pay their room and board.
[Much] as war attracts me and fascinates my mind with its tremendous situations, I feel more deeply every year . . . what vile and wicked folly and barbarism it all is.
Mr. president, I've been a citizen of the United States of America for thirty three years and was never invited to the White House. It sure gives me pleasure to be invited to the Black House.
The years of anxious searching in the dark, with their intense longing, their alternations of confidence and exhaustion and the final emergence into the light -- only those who have experienced it can understand it.