Ai Weiwei Quotes

'Everything is art. Everything is politics.'

Ai Weiwei

• Art

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Quotes to Explore

• A stale article, if you dip it in a good, warm, sunny smile, will go off better than a fresh one that you've scowled upon.

  

  Nathaniel Hawthorne
  • Good
  • Smile
  • Warm

• I wasn't really geeky. In terms of the high school hierarchy, I was very much in the middle ground. You have the really popular guys, you have the nerdy guys, and then you have the people who really don't care - and that was me. I wasn't really picked on or anything like that.

  

  Callan McAuliffe
  • People
  • School
  • High

• Never speak to an invalid from behind, nor from the door, nor from any distance from him, nor when he is doing anything. The official politeness of servants in these things is so grateful to invalids, that many prefer, without knowing why, having none but servants about them.

  

  Florence Nightingale
  • Why
  • Door
  • Speak

• Eighty percent of my life is normal like any other mother. I worry about my children, if they're doing all right. I worry that my husband is doing well. The 20 percent is just the queen aspect that factors in. But for me, it's life as usual, and it's just taking care of my family.

  

  Queen Rania of Jordan
  • Life
  • Children
  • Family

• My parents divorced when I was seven. Because divorce is messy, for good or ill, they sent me to boarding school.

  

  Jack Davenport
  • Good
  • School
  • Parents

• When I first got back from the war, I said, 'I'm gonna write the Great American Novel about the Vietnam War.' So I sat down and wrote 1,700 pages of sheer psychotherapy drivel. It was first person, and there would be pages about wet socks and cold feet.

  

  Karl Marlantes
  • Great
  • American
  • War

• Some people ask, 'How do you attract the young and so many different people when your poetry is complicated and different?' I say, 'My accomplishment is that my readers trust me and accept my suggestions for change.'

  

  Mahmoud Darwish
  • People
  • Different
  • Change

• My husband had a very strong identity and was successful in his life. Thank God for that. There's no way I can control him. I wouldn't stay married to him if I felt I could. I can readily take my business personality into the home. But he forces me to be a partner rather than the boss.

  

  Barbara Corcoran
  • Life
  • God
  • Home

• I really appreciate people like Rosie coming out and saying I've inspired them.

  

  Wanda Jackson
  • People
  • Inspired
  • Appreciate

• People do not lack strength; they lack will.

  

  Victor Hugo
  • People
  • Will
  • Strength

• It has an air about it of having strolled in from the street with a few tricks up its sleeve, and if everybody would relax, please, it would do its best to pass the time whimsically.

  

  Walter Kerr
  • Up
  • Time
  • Best

• The Tao that can be told is not the eternal Tao; the name that can be named is not the eternal name. The Nameless is the origin of Heaven and Earth; the Named is the mother of all things.

  

  Lao Tzu
  • Mother
  • Earth
  • Heaven

• I don't know that I would want to be married again, but I do love companionship.

  

  Florence Henderson
  • Love
  • Want
  • Know

• Upon the death of my father, our family and myself were emotionally and financially exhausted.

  

  Sam Sheppard
  • Family
  • Father
  • Death

• I don't like to look typical.

  

  Adam Lambert
  • Like
  • Look
  • Typical

• I didn't want to write a biographie romancee especially since I already write novels, nor did I want to challenge the rules of the biography game, arbitrary as those rules might be.

  

  Edmund White
  • Game
  • Want
  • Challenge

• I struggled for many, many years following 'Music and Lyrics' - I mean really struggled.

  

  Haley Bennett
  • Music
  • Mean
  • Years

• Public appearances are a headache. I hold mine down to a minimum.

  

  Jack Nicklaus
  • Down
  • Mine
  • Appearances

• Exercise has its hazards. Runners are sidelined by shinsplints, freestylists by swimmer's ear, and who hasn't heard of tennis elbow? But the fitness buff of the '90s has a far greater worry. StairMaster Butt.

  

  Jake Tapper
  • Worry
  • Exercise
  • Tennis

• Being of service to others is what brings true happiness.

  

  Marie Osmond
  • True
  • Service

• Reality in movies is the reality of the story you're telling, so it may not match the reality as we know it, but the reason there's art is that it tries to bring some kind of understanding of all the suffering and joys and pain that we go through. Storytelling brings some value to it.

  

  Caleb Deschanel
  • Art
  • May
  • Reality

• I know now that he who hopes to be universal in his art must plant in his own soil. Great art is like a tree, which grows in a particular place and has a trunk, leaves, blossoms, boughs, fruit, and roots of its own. The more native art is, the more it belongs to the entire world, because taste is rooted in nature. When art is true, it is one with nature. This is the secret of primitive art and also of the art of the mastersMichelangelo, Czanne, Seurat, and Renoir. The secret of my best work is that it is Mexican.

  

  Diego Rivera
  • World
  • Art
  • Tree

• 'Everything is art. Everything is politics.'

  

  Ai Weiwei
  • Art