Ai Weiwei Quotes
We see plenty of artistic work that reflects superficial social conditions, but very little work that questions fundamental values.
Quotes to Explore
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When I started out back in Louisville, there was Harry Collins. He was my first teacher. He saw that I was so obsessed with magic that he taught me the love of magic.
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I think that as you grow up, as you get older, we can't get bitter, we can't get jaded.
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I identified in a very deep way with the individuals I was writing about because the theme that runs through this story is of extraordinary hardship and the will to overcome it.
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I went to this little performing arts school in downtown Phoenix. You had to dance or act, and everyone sang in choir. I started out playing the saxophone, but I always wanted to be in an orchestra. That was a dream as a kid, and there aren't a lot of saxophones in an orchestra.
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I know you can be up one minute and drop the next, so I'm trying to maintain a steady course so I can have some longevity.
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Each book tends to have its own identity rather than the author's. It speaks from itself rather than you. Each book is unlike the others because you are not bringing the same voice to every book. I think that keeps you alive as a writer.
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The best philosophers were not academics, but had another job, so their philosophy was not corrupted by careerism.
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If you live in rock and roll, as I do, you see the reality of sex, of male lust and women being aroused by male lust. It attracts women. It doesn't repel them.
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No 27-year-old has the experience to run a company that does a quarter of a billion dollars a year in sales.
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I am a contradiction myself. I'm always looking for something that scares me because when I'm not scared, I'm not stimulated.
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I pick up the details that drive the organization insane. But sweating the details is more important than anything else.
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The Sino-Indian War in 1962 has fundamentally shaped and distorted Indian attitudes towards China. It also obscured a great deal of what has happened in China since 1962.
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I have a very rich and wonderful personal life, and at its core are my sons.
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Half the time, people will be abusing me on Twitter, and half the time, somebody will be praising me. So either it will go to my head, or I will take it to my heart. So better I stay away from it.
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If there is a meaning in life at all, then there must be a meaning in suffering. Suffering is an ineradicable part of life, even as fate and death. Without suffering and death, human life cannot be complete.
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For better or worse, a lot of people who build things don't want to part ways. They don't have the short exit plan that a lot of the investors have.
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I work all day, do research, sketch my ideas, prepare for performances.
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Publishing for me is a business, not an ideology.
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I like a little bit of a rough look because it's sexy. But when a man has a rough look, and he goes and gets a cleanup, then it's very sexy as well.
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There's no doubt that I'm a better president now than when I first took office. This is not a job where there's a manual, and over time you get a better sense of what's important, what's not, how to see around corners and anticipate problems, as opposed to just managing problems once they've arrived.
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I think in this movie, every time I see his work, I'm blown away by it because he, to me, he really embodied the character so powerfully and so real, so truthfully to me.
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I know why jobs go, and I know why they come.
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I had the idea in my twenties that a writer could immediately become the late Henry James. Henry James himself had to mature. Even Saul Bellow did.
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We see plenty of artistic work that reflects superficial social conditions, but very little work that questions fundamental values.
